It's All In The Cards
by bananafrappe
Summary: Sakura blinked, seizing upon one of the words that she had been thinking. Destined… that meant something to her. She didn't know what, or why such an underused word would suddenly worry her so much, but the same feeling she had been having all day, the one that was building into a poisonous latency even now, surrounded that word, and she didn't like what that boded.
1. Be Careful What You Wish For

It's All in the Cards

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><p><em>I'll be quick about this; this will be a multi-chaptered ItaSaku story, rated M for an eventual and wonderful lemon, language, and violence, set in a canon world. The setup might seem a little weird, but I like it. I'm just glad I finally got something worked on and finished.<em>

_Disclaimer: No, I don't own Naruto, or much of anything else really._

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><p>Chapter One: Be Careful What You Wish For<p>

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><p>Storm clouds, both thick and murky, roiled on high as strong gusts of northbound wind whipped them into an angry frenzy in the late night sky. No distinction could be made from one to another until telltale and sudden lightning ripped open the throat of the sky from time to time, the glow from its abrupt appearance casting deep ridges and even deeper shadows on the cumulus monstrosities that rolled on, not minding the noisome interruption of their travels, without preamble.<p>

The thunder that resulted from the crackle of the unbound and raw electricity arching to earth pounded undiscriminatorily on both eardrum and object alike, causing anything from a mere flinch to a whole avalanche of loose stone and not caring either way. Rain from the clouds far above lashed every exposed surface with a fervor that bordered almost on cruelty, tapping on windows with the ferocity and rough size of hailstones and beating like millions of tiny, angry fists on roofs and doors.

Even the wind harmonized with the fury of the storm, stealing away any object that was not tied down and bearing it off to a new home in an almost joyous fashion, as though enjoying the activity. What the gusts could not carry away, they tried extremely hard to at least rip a piece of it off or punish the structure in its path by whipping it with unnecessary and almost hurricane strength force, occasionally even tearing thick branches from swaying trees, sending them crashing down to disastrous ends.

Overall, it could be said that one of the usual summer storms had found its way into the streets of Konoha.

Safe from the pouring rain and the howling wind, nestled barefooted among various pillows and blankets in a tight circle lit only by firelight and the occasional bolt of lightning from beyond the curtained windows in the walls of the room, four twelve year old girls fell suddenly into hushed anticipation, a great change from the previously raucous laughter and girlish jibing that had rung between the walls of the home they were spending the night in.

Every eye in the room was locked with supreme interest on the pack of playing cards one of the girls had just produced, some of the glances wary and untrusting, as was the case of the pale eyed, dark haired girl tightly hugging a fox plushie to her chest, skeptical and disbelieving, as the raised eyebrow and unconvinced lip pout on a small blonde girl with a long ponytail seemed to indicate, or even excited and eager, if the fidgeting that the pink haired youth, her hands spread flat on the floor as she leaned forward to gaze rapturously at the cards in the smug looking, brown bunned girl's hands said anything.

"And it really works, Ten Ten? _Really_?" came an enthusiastic query that finally broke the silence that had fallen between the rabble, emitting from the obviously excitable pink haired girl who was still gazing rapturously at the pack of playing cards, and the complacent expression on Ten Ten's face became an all-out smirk, a low chuckle leaking between her lips mysteriously while she looked across the circle from under her eyelashes, even the storm quiet as though holding its breath for the moment, eagerly awaiting the answer to the question.

"Oh yes, Sakura; it works. Telling the future isn't a difficult thing to do, if you know the proper way to deal the cards and how to read them correctly…" she muttered ominously, and beside the small gathering, the flames of the fire guttered unexpectedly, as though an unnatural wind had blown through the room as the words were spoken. A shiver went down all of their spines, every eye glancing warily at the now cheerfully crackling fire, before the blonde girl scoffed and folded her arms, looking down her nose condescendingly at the still striking looking Ten Ten.

"Come on, guys; you can't _really_ believe in that crap. My dad told me that fortune telling is really just a lot of guesswork and superstition. The only real way to see the future is with true enlightenment, like that old man that came through the village a few months ago. He knew a special jutsu that the gods themselves taught him that gave him the opportunity to catch glimpses of the future, of really important things that would change the world. And while you can see some things with Tarot cards, that's not what Ten Ten has. She has _playing cards_. This is a load of bull," she said with absolute conviction in her tone, as though she knew best and that the others ought to believe her over anything else, and the pale and slightly shivering girl looked hopeful of the explanation, as though she had been just waiting for a reason to believe that she wasn't about to see her own future.

While the put down had obviously been meant to end all interest in the subject, Ten Ten remained unimpressed by the blond girl's easy dismissal, merely shrugging and dragging the tip of her finger over the laminated front of the package of cards she held.

"That is true, Ino; these are not Tarot cards. They will not show you what is to come in your life, what forces will be acting against you or with you accurately, but that isn't what I said they would do, is it? You can still do a small amount of fortune telling with playing cards, if you know what the arrangements of the cards mean… but only regarding love."

"Yes, Hinata, _love_," Ten Ten said impressively in response to the gasp that had come from the pale girl on her right, though how she heard it over the renewed fervor of the wind and rain was a true mystery. "Not how you're going to die, not what is going to happen to your family… love. And in a very specific way, as well. Because of the very limited amount of information you are asking for, and the quality of the future you are trying to broach, it is a simple thing to view without spending decades sitting alone on the top of a mountain with no one but yourself for company."

With this explained, Ten Ten looked around the small gathering imperiously, her smirk returning slightly as her audience seemed to be relieved and once again interested, though in some cases only grudgingly. Nodding minutely, she bent to open the pack of cards and withdrew them with a flourish, casting an impassive eye at the curtain beyond which lighting had just forked before returning her attention to those sitting before her once more, the hush of minutes before settling over the girls again.

"Now… I'll explain how this works very briefly," Ten Ten said quietly as she began to sort through the cards, occasionally setting one to the side, face down and unexplained. "This kind of fortune telling can only be directed between two people. One of those people is you guys… and the other is the guy you want to find out about having a relationship with. Once I've sorted out the cards that aren't supposed to be in the deck for this sort of thing, I will present the deck to you, face down, and you will tap the letters of the boy's name you're thinking about onto the top of the deck, first _and_ last name. Then I will go through the cards seven times, taking out those that need be, and then lay the cards to be read."

Having been through the cards three times, triple checking that she hadn't missed any superfluous ones, she then slid the outstanding cards back into the box, closed it, set it to the side, and held the remaining deck out to Hinata, whose eyes flew wide and whose cheeks were instantly stained a deep crimson. She hid her face behind the head of the fox she was still clutching tightly, and her before unheard voice came out in gentle but stumbling stutters. "I-I-I don't k-know, Ten T-ten… what i-if… i-it's bad?" the shuddering girl muttered, her fear plain enough despite her stammering, and Ten Ten shared a sympathetic glance with the other girls present before comfortingly patting the fearful Hinata's arm.

"Then he just isn't the guy for you, Hinata. It's nothing to worry about. And you should know better than most that even if I don't see anything there for you, there may still be hope. The future is a many layered and elusive thing, and the meaning of the cards is not always clear. So don't worry; this is supposed to be fun, and being afraid of cards is just silly. Go ahead," she prompted encouragingly, blithely ignoring the snort from Ino and the tapping of a windblown branch on one of the windows both.

Shyly and slowly, without removing her face from the soft fur of the grinning fox or even opening her eyes, Hinata extended a hand to the extended deck and tapped her forefinger on the top of them, once, twice, three times and on, until she stopped at thirteen and withdrew her hand, once again hiding it under the soft blanket she was curled up with. The fire flickered again, seemingly at the same time that the final tap was made, but its movement was ignored as Ten Ten immediately began sorting the still facedown cards into seven piles, her fingers flying over the backs of them in a pattern both indistinguishable but attention drawing.

As the piles were very quickly gone through, some being set aside in the same way as before and some being restacked to be gone through again, even Hinata chanced a glance up to see what was happening, the slap of cards and the pressing quiet of the girl they all watched too intriguing to be missed. The storm in the distance roared on unheeded as the girls sat impatiently awaiting their friend's future, and when the last pile had once again been picked up, it's girth much less than it formerly had been and the discard pile very sizable indeed, it seemed almost a century had passed. Breaths that had been held were released as though they had been unknowingly imprisoned, and all eyes were, with a steadfast faith, on the stack of cards about to be dealt.

Ten Ten, with what seemed like deliberate slowness, carefully placed the cards she still held on the ground in front of her, now face up and glinting ominously in the firelight, so that they lay in a small circle, each of their corners touching minutely. Once they had been dealt, all of the girls leaned forward to look at them, though none of them with as much intensity as Ten Ten, whose eyes flicked over the circle quickly and with deep understanding on her furrowed brow, her lips moving as a raised finger traveled lightly over the tops of each of the cards in turn. Sakura, Ino and Hinata all tried to find some meaning in the remaining seven cards, but could find none and one by one, they sat back to wait for Ten Ten's explanation, impatiently tapping fingers or yawning widely or simply staring with barely withheld interest.

Finally, after what seemed yet another hundred years of waiting, Ten Ten waved a hand at all of them, beckoning to her friends to lean forward and sending a glance over at Hinata specially. After she had their attention, she pointed to two of the cards, the queen of hearts and the king of clubs, which rested at the front of the circle with the ten of spades lying between them. "Okay guys, what you see here is Hinata (Ten Ten tapped the queen of hearts as she spoke) and the guy she asked about (another tap directed at the king of clubs). These cards indicate their earthly bodies. As you can see, they are separated by a card, the ten of spades. This foretells a great struggle, maybe even a war, which must pass before the two can come together in person. As it is in the black suit, this indicates that it is a battle that must be fought by him, a difficulty that only he can deal with."

Moving on, she then pointed at the other end of the circle, where the nine of diamonds, the three of clubs, the ace of clubs and the ace of hearts lay together. Tapping the first in the line, she traced a path between it and the queen of hearts, whose corners intersected. "The nine of diamonds lies close to Hinata's earthly body, showing what amounts to a large and powerful intervention from her side of the relationship, perhaps family, but definitely outside her control, that seeks to keep her away from the ace of clubs, which represents the potential love of her intended."

Moving her finger over to the next card, she then put emphasis on the club in the corner of the card, looking significantly around at her audience as she did. "As you can see, the three of clubs also separates them, but this is not worrisome; it merely shows that Hinata's love interest has a minor qualm, something personal and most likely about himself, that keeps him from wanting to potentially hurt Hinata. Other than that, you may notice that here (Ten Ten then tapped on the ace of clubs, the ace of hearts, and the king of clubs in order), Hinata already has a great deal of closeness of heart to her intended, showing a shared trust, and maybe even likeness, between their wishes and desires in a relationship."

Seemingly finished with the reading, Ten Ten sat back comfortably and looked over at Hinata with a small, understanding smile lifting her lips, her hands gathering together both the laid out cards and the discarded pile without looking at them. "This relationship is a wonderful thing, Hinata. There are a few big problems that both of you have to overcome, but with willingness, determination, and hope, all things are possible. I think that this relationship circle has the most promise of all that I've seen. Naruto is a lucky guy."

With her analysis given (and a blushing and denial muttering Hinata left to ruminate to herself on the future she might have), Ten Ten then turned to the other girls in the group, both of which seemed to be eager for their turn, though both were also sending untrusting glances at the other when they weren't looking. It was well known that they shared a liking for the same boy, and it was obvious that they both wanted to know their chances before the other did.

Obviously unsure how to proceed without causing bloodshed between the two constantly warring but somewhat friendly girls, Ten Ten held out the pack of cards between them, giving an even chance to both of them so that it would not be her fault if one went before the other. "Who's next?" she asked, having to raise her voice slightly as a sudden rush of wind almost drowned out everything but the echoing crash of a distant clap of thunder, and in the resulting scramble to get at the pack of cards, it became obvious that both had been impressed by the telling that had just passed for the shyest member of their group, even the before doubting Ino's interest piqued.

After a short scuffle, during which everyone got hit by at least one pillow, Ino extended one hand triumphantly while pushing Sakura back with the other, quickly spelling out the name that was always on the forefront of most of the girls their age's minds. Twelve quick finger taps later she leaned back, her mouth set in a haughty leer that vaguely echoed Ten Ten's own earlier superiority, and Sakura was allowed to collapse back onto her pouf with ungraceful distemper, a glare directed at the side of Ino's head.

All enmity was quickly forgotten, or at least laid to the side for the moment, as Ten Ten once again began to sort the cards, the lengthy process just as interesting as it had been the first time despite the absence of anything really worth watching. They all counted down in their heads as cards were efficiently yet mysteriously separated into their differing piles, sorted through, and then gathered together again to undergo the same treatment over again. Seven, six… three, two… finally, with yet again released breath and anxious movement, the cards were slowly placed, necks craned over the newly emerging circle, and near silence fell as the girl's fortune telling friend read what was to come, only the storm in the back ground and the crackling fire adding ambience to the scene.

There were obvious differences in the layout and number of cards this time, however; after all of the shuffling and restacking and dealing, there were nine cards remaining, and there was another face card besides just the kings and queens of the intended's suits present. Ten Ten took a little longer looking over the layout this time as well, and when she looked up to wave the other girls closer and to glance at Ino, there was a glint of pity in her eye.

"You may have noticed that there are more cards this time… Ino, this is a difficult and convoluted reading, so don't be surprised if you don't understand too much of it. Alright, let's start here," Ten Ten explained as she gestured at the five cards closest to herself, which consisted of the ten of clubs, the king of clubs, the ace of clubs, the seven of clubs, and the nine of spades. "This is, as you know, Ino's intended and his feelings of potential love. As you can see, he had surrounded himself by a ten foot wall of his own problems and desires, and keeps his feelings to himself, the person who knows them best. He faces much tribulation in his future, something that is as unavoidable as the distinction that he, potentially, will never trust anyone other than himself."

Ino's face fell at this news, and she looked like she wanted to get up and walk away, but Ten Ten held up a hand, pointing at two of the other cards in the ring. "We're not done yet, Ino; there is good news, just not about your intended." She indicated the ace of hearts, which lay directly against the nine of spades, and the queen of hearts on the other side of the circle, while rested against the ten of clubs. "As you can see, you never truly give up on your love interest, always close in your feelings and self and ready to help him should he ever turn to you. But also on your mind is something, or _someone_, else…"

Ten Ten glanced up at Ino shortly, giving her a searching, interested look, before looking back down at the three cards she hadn't mentioned yet, which were the jack of diamonds, the five of diamonds, and the five of hearts, all lying between the ace and queen of hearts. "The jack of diamonds represents another man, someone you know and trust who will, against your better judgment, break through your defenses and gain access to your heart. You will put up a fight (a finger was laid on the five of hearts), but this man is your equal in determination on the subject (an indicating point at the five of diamonds), and it is _this_ person that you are meant to have your happy ending with."

Following the end of the fortune, Ten Ten sent another curious glance at Ino, whose expression indicated that she was, for the lack of a kinder term, shell shocked. "I assume that you originally picked Sasuke as your intended… but do you have any idea who this other man might be?" Ino, staring into space and seemingly forgetting to be disappointed by the announcement that she and Uchiha Sasuke were not meant to be, shook her head dreamily, but Ten Ten did not seem surprised by this, merely shaking her head as well and shrugging while gathering up her spread out cards once again. "Well, if you have an idea, I'd be happy to do another reading about that guy. Now… I expect we have someone else who would like to know a little about their future with Mr. Uchiha."

Ten Ten turned expectantly towards Sakura, who was practically jumping in place on her pillow. The fortune teller's assumption appeared to be correct, since the pink haired girl leaned forwards and began tapping her finger almost too quickly to see against the newly reassembled deck of cards with barely a second passing between her action and the original query.

Apparently, her friendship with the still comatose blond girl did not extend to sympathies over the subject of the target of their rivalry.

Varying and straying attentions once again returned raptly to the shuffling and slapping of the playing cards, though none were more intrinsically riveted than Sakura, her eyes following her friend's every move as though not doing so would cause her to miss something imperative. The cards flew with precision into their piles and out again, folding over and under and around one another in a dance that made sense to none but their wielder, and the time stretched on almost unbearably while the much awaited circle was laid with care, after a few discouraging grunts from Ten Ten and a longer than normal separating.

From the initial inspection of the cards now laid face up before the group of girls, things didn't look very promising. The highest number of cards yet had been laid down, eleven in total, and in terms of the man Sakura was interested in finding out about, nothing seemed to have changed from the last dealing at all. Put out by this and unwilling to once again hear that Sasuke would never allow anyone but himself into his embrace, Sakura made an almost mirrored movement to what Ino had been prepared to do upon the delivery of her bad news, but once again Ten Ten held up a hand, still staring intently at the cards.

"I know what you're seeing, Sakura, but don't leave yet. There is more, and the layout is not the same. Hold on a second," she cautioned, and Sakura settled back down reluctantly to await her fate, which took another few moments for Ten Ten to divine. The call came once more to lean forward, however, and as they all did, the fortune teller began her explanation.

"This one was hard to read. I know it might look the same as the last one, Sakura," she muttered in an aside, glancing up at the despondent looking girl across for her. "But it isn't. This circle is very different. Alright, let's look here first." She waved a hand over the formation surrounding the king and ace of clubs, the eight and six of clubs still an impenetrable wall of black.

"Sakura's intended is still surrounding himself with his own reservations and mistrust, but look here (she indicated the six of clubs again, the ace of hearts next to the six, and the ten of clubs next to that). He has extended the reach of his wall to encompass something else this time, and what it looks like, to me, is that he acknowledges Sakura's affections and, while he doesn't let her herself any closer than an arm's length away, his defenses are lower in regards to her feelings. He trusts her, as a friend would another, and has let her into his world, if only a little."

This was clearly meant to comfort Sakura, but she merely looked stony in response to this news and looked down at the rest of the cards expectantly. Ten Ten sighed, heart obviously heavy, before continuing, her fingers moving over the next two cards. "The nine of spades and the nine of hearts intersected indicates a personal battle the two will fight, one that will be violent but of great importance to Sakura's heart, as her side is in her own suit, and her interest's pride, but the two will be evenly matched. I do not know how it will end, or if it is even a material fight, but it separates Sakura's earthly body (a finger was pointed at the queen of hearts then) from acceptance into her intended's embrace."

Sakura looked aghast at this, as if the news that she would ever fight her obsession over anything was horrifying in the extreme, but Ten Ten plowed in, tapping the last two cards in the circle without looking up. "I'm sure you noticed, but we have here another face card, the jack of hearts, separated from the eight of clubs by the eight of hearts. This is difficult to understand, as the suit indicates that the jack is a friend of Sakura's, but the proximity of the card indicates a great deal of trust and, if it weren't for the suit, a mutual attraction. The meaning of this is uncertain, but the fact that the jack is kept from the eight of clubs by the eight of hearts is no mystery; the jack is obviously also a great friend of Sakura's love interest, but is held at bay from being as close as possible to him by not only his defenses, but by a personal issue of Sakura's as well."

The other girls looked confused, as though the explanation had ended too soon, when Ten Ten leaned back and looked around at them in a way that clearly stated that she was done. Sakura was most affronted, and spoke loudly over a fresh onslaught of wind and rain pounding deafeningly on the windows.

"That's it? Me and Sasuke get to be friends, and I'm going to have a big problem with him later, but that's _it_? I don't even get to have some other guy in my reading like Ino?" she shrieked, slamming a fist on the carpeted floor in her ire.

Ten Ten winced at the screech that her friend had emitted, rubbing the side of her neck and grimacing. "Sakura, that's not how this kind of thing works. Ino's only showed that she would have someone else because that someone else came to rise through Ino's faith in Sasuke over time. Yours only showed your friendship with Sasuke and Naruto, as I'm sure the other person in your reading is, because that is all that comes out of it. I'm sure you won't be alone your whole life; you just have to ask about other people to see what comes of them. You have to ask the right questions to get the right answers."

Sakura looked mutinous at this, her upper lip curling as she clearly readied to throw a retort back at her friend, but Ten Ten interrupted her quickly, waving her hands and making shushing noises. "Sakura, that doesn't mean that there aren't other ways of finding out what will happen for you. It won't be as accurate, and there is no real way of knowing who the prediction will mean, but I can lay the cards for you again in a different way, to see what lies in store for you. Do you want to try?"

Sakura's expression changed to one of contemplation, her jaw jutting out mulishly as she mulled her choice over, before she shot a quick query out, her eyes narrowed on Ten Ten's fire flickered visage. "Is it possible that it could predict something for me and Sasuke still? Something besides our future friendship?" she asked sharply, her decision obviously rooted on the answer of her inquiry, and though guilt tightened Ten Ten's throat momentarily, the negative answer she knew was true on the tip of her tongue, pity stayed her hand and, instead, she gave a softer and kinder reply.

"It is possible, Sakura. We will only know if we lay the cards."

Bright hope sparked in Sakura's eyes and, as an answer, she sat forward raptly in place, eyes only for the cards still on the ground. "So what do we need to do?" she questioned excitedly, and Ten Ten quickly gathered the cards back up and reshuffled them, once again holding the face down deck out to Sakura.

"It's quite simple; all we do is, instead of putting in the name of one man, tap in 'men'. This will broaden the search to all the males that will stumble through your life. Like I said, this is a much wider pursuit and thus will lessen the accuracy of the reading, but we should get a good result from this," the fortune teller for the night replied, once again layering mystery over her tone, and, despite the skeptical snort that Ino released in response, Sakura did as she was bid, her finger beating out a short but imperative tattoo on the card tops.

For the fourth time that evening, the cards were dealt, discarded, withdrawn, and dealt again, none but the dealer herself knowing the purpose of her hand's movements as they swept over the cards with the grace and care of the finest weaver. Fingers, swift with the agility of practice and intimate knowledge, stacked and swept and sorted until, once again, the remainder of the process were laid face up in their circle, Ten Ten's eyes and visage serious as she read what had been placed before her.

Silence, interrupted only by the sounds of the raging storm just beyond the four walls, reigned for longer than it had taken for all of the other readings. The crackle of the flames in the grate seemed harsher than they had before, the wind more piercing and the shadows deeper than ever as the quiet stretched on and on, with each of the girls present growing more and more tense as the time dragged by. Finally, after another age of waiting, Ten Ten looked up, seemingly satisfied if anything could be taken for granted from her half smile and her glittering eyes.

"This is excellent news, Sakura," she began with right off the bat, and pointed at four of the nine cards, namely the queen of hearts, the ace of clubs, the five of clubs, and the king of clubs. "The man you are destined for adores you, and from the high defensive cards on the other side of your representative (a sweeping hand indicated the eight and six of spades to the left of the queen of hearts), he would do anything within his power to protect you. Your heart card is separated from the whole affair, as is to be expected (an uncaring gesture at the other cards in the circle, the ace of hearts between the four and five of hearts), but its defense cards are low so, in time, you will give in to this love. This is great, Sakura. You should be really happy about thi…"

Ten ten's enthusiastic reassurances were interrupted by the pink haired girl with little respect, her eyes focused hard on the circle of cards in front of her. "I'll only be happy if this is Sasuke were talking about," she snapped waspishly, her gaze whipping up to glare at her friend. Ten Ten flushed and averted her gaze, biting at her bottom lip and flicking the tip of her finger against the edge of one of her cards, desperate for anything to divert her attention from the subject at hand and make the sting of the truth less harsh.

"I'm sorry, Sakura… but I don't think it's him."

Sakura's reaction was all that she could have expected. Hands flying into the air in frustration, anger creasing her forehead and turning the corners of her lips down into a grimace, the excitable girl growled, "This is such a load of _crap_!"

Pointing an accusing finger at her friend, she went on exuberantly, getting more and more shrill as she went on. "You must be doing it wrong. Sasuke-kun and I are meant to be! There's nothing that could be clearer! If I had watched more closely, then this," she screeched, slamming a fist down next to the disregarded card circle, "wouldn't have happened and… and…"

Sakura suddenly fell into silence, her eyes wide and expression clouded with contemplation, before her face cleared, her eyes far away for a moment before a triumphant look overcame her features, accompanied by a smile so bright it almost looked fake. She pointed down at the circle of cards on the ground she had just been insulting eagerly, looking with earnest at Ten Ten once more. "That's it! With all this mystery and superstition going around, the third time should be the charm! Right? Shuffle them again, and we can do another reading! It'll come out right this time, I'm sure of it!"

Her smile faded slightly as Ten Ten immediately paled at this suggestion, blanching and shaking her head wildly. "What? What's wrong?" Sakura queried impatiently, and Ten Ten swallowed heavily, sending a mysterious glance up at the ceiling, almost like a silent apology, before she turned back to Sakura.

"Sakura, I can't do that. I don't know what would happen, but just thinking of tempting the gods like that is dangerous! They've given you a gift by revealing a part of your future for you, and throwing it back in their faces like this is extremely rude and very foolish. I don't dare even try to do it again; if I lay the cards again for you after you have rejected their prediction, something catastrophic would happen, I'm sure of it. For anyone else, it would come out to be the same every time. But for you, after your disrespect… something might… change."

Another shudder shook the girl's shoulders, mostly due to the uttering of the last word, and Sakura's eyebrows furrowed. "Well, that's what I want. I want it to change," she said slowly, but Ten Ten shook her head again, covering her ears and sending a fearful glance at the windows, beyond which the storm seemed to be gathering strength.

"You don't understand… the cards wouldn't just be different, your _future _would be too. Something would _change_, something that has been written since the dawn of time for your life… and it wouldn't be nice. It would be a punishment. The gods don't appreciate being scorned this way, Sakura… don't say anything else. Let's just… let's go get some of the food and put in a movie. I think we've played with the cards enough," Ten Ten muttered ominously, and though a fell silence encompassed not only the room, but the world outside as well, almost as though the universe itself were daring another word be spoken on the subject, Sakura seemed to be unable to help herself.

"You are _such_ a superstitious trout. You're just being silly now, and I don't believe a word of your excuse. Come on Ten Ten, just once more. It'll be right this time, I know it," Sakura bleated obstinately, and in the seconds following her foolish words, the world seemed to explode.

What had been complete silence erupted into a thunderous crash so loud that the girl's screams were completely muffled by the sudden noise, a white so bright from the lightning that had struck just outside the house leaking though the windows and blinding anyone who had their eyes open. Two of the windows blew open on an abrupt gust of wind, their curtains blowing about in the resulting gale without restraint, and not only did the previously roaring fire in the grate flicker and splutter, it went out completely.

Confusion reigned following the fury of the storm, as the girls had no light to traverse the room with, but order was eventually restored, the windows relatched, the fire restarted with a little trouble, and chairs righted (they had been knocked over while the children stumbled along in the dark). No one wanted to say it, but all the girls were looking at Ten Ten for conformation regarding what had just happened. Could it have been the anger of the gods that had made such a thing happen, just at the moment of Sakura's out of place words?

All that Ten Ten could offer was a shrug. She didn't know, and she obviously didn't want to think about it, so the other girls, Sakura included, went off to fetch chips and cookies from the kitchen while Ten Ten straightened up the mess the storm's intrusion had caused. While she rearranged pillows and straightened curtains, her gaze was caught by the cards that the group had previously been so interested in.

They had not budged from their spot, even though the wind had been blowing strongly enough to rip a few pictures from the walls, along with their hanging nails.

Hesitant but curious, Ten Ten approached the ring of cards slowly, their faces flickering eerily in the light from the fire as it ate hungrily at the fresh logs that had been laid in the grate. It took her a moment of looking at them to realize what had happened, but when she did she let out a scream of shock that immediately sent her friends scurrying out of the kitchen, expecting to see an intruder or a visible danger. All they found was Ten Ten staring down at the cards on the ground with her mouth hanging open, her arms limp by her sides.

"Ten Ten! You nearly scared the pants off of us! What did you scream for?" Ino demanded hotly, her hands on her hips as she tried to slow the beating of her heart to a steady pace, but Ten Ten did not seem to be able to speak, merely pointing down at the cards at her feet mutely. Snorting in exasperation, Ino took a step closer and looked down before falling still, staring at the cards as well.

Sakura, having stopped in the lit doorway to the kitchen when she saw that nothing was wrong, cocked her head to the side. "Well? What is it?" she inquired, and Ino looked over her shoulder with frightened eyes, ignoring Hinata's sudden gasp as it permeated the air (she had stepped forward from behind an armchair to see what the fuss was), and said, simply but reverently, "The cards changed."

Sakura stood frozen in place for a second before wrinkling her nose and stalking over to her friend's sides, folding her arms and rolling her eyes. "Right. They changed. Ten Ten didn't just rearrange them while we weren't looking and isn't just trying to get back at me for not believing in her superstition crap. Well? You obviously know what they say now, Ten Ten. What's different?"

Ten Ten had sat down shakily right where she had been standing, eyes locked with disbelief on the cards in front of her, and without preamble, almost as though she were being forced to speak, she began to explain the six cards now laid out before her. "The queen of hearts is the centerpiece of this arrangement, unusually located at the very top of the ring. This indicates desperation, fear. To her right, the ace of spades. The most auspicious card in the deck, one that indicates a powerful and undeniable man's desires, it is connected both to Sakura and the ace of hearts, kept in place despite the loft she places herself on. He refuses to be moved from his claim. To the right of the ace of hearts, and the left of the queen of hearts, are high level cards of Sakura's resistance, the nine and ten of diamonds, both trying to keep at bay the king of spades, who, unfortunately, outranks both the resistance cards. The king of spades is a master of the art of war, who knows what he wants and will not allow anyone or anything, not even your feeble resistance, Sakura, to stand in his way. This man will overpower you no matter what you do, and will have you whether you want him or not, though the cards indicate that you are as drawn to him as he is to you."

Silence once again fell over the group of girls, though it was one of respectful and awestruck stigma this time, rather than tactless disbelief. Sakura was the first to speak, and her voice trembled as she did. "So… so, uhm… what d-does this mean? Who is this man?" she said tremulously, and Ten Ten looked up over her shoulder at the slightly quavering girl.

"Who is he? I don't know. It could be a war lord, an extremely powerful ninja, a world leader… but someone of great importance and of great and terrible reputation. What it means, however… this is your love story now. You will be pursued by a man that will not take no for an answer, that will not stop until you are his alone, and nothing will stop him, not even you. Beware, Sakura. This is a dangerous man, and he could either bring you very great happiness… or be the end of you."

The quiet stretched a moment longer before Ten Ten forced a laugh, getting up and brushing her knees off. "But who cares about that stuff? Just a game, guys… nothing to worry about. Let's get those snacks, and I'll get the movies together. This is supposed to be a fun night, remember?" she said encouragingly, and one by one the other girls agreed, enthusiasm rebuilding as the cards on the floor were left behind in favor of the fun that lay in store.

Once again alone, Ten Ten's smile dropped from her face as she crouched down beside the box of cards she had set to the side earlier, opening the top and sliding the few cards out. Turning them over, she went through them quickly, flicking through the king of hearts, the queen of clubs, the ace, king, and queen of diamonds quickly before finding what she was looking for, a sense of deep and disturbed trepidation settling over her.

Nestled in her palm, glinting in the wan light, were the king and ace of spades, their exact copies still set in the circle beside her on the floor.

* * *

><p>Over two hundred miles away, across many rain lashed and twig strewn roads and through the richly wooded countryside, a seventeen year old boy rolled over in his sleep, gaining a more comfortable position for his slumbering to continue despite the rocky floor of the cave that he and his blue skinned partner slept in.<p>

As he did so, the dream he was having suddenly changed course, showing him the visage of a pretty girl with pink hair that he had never seen before, a strange change from the recalling of the horrors of his daily life as a member of Akatsuki. He did not seem disturbed by the new pictures in his mind's eye, however; in fact, muscles that had been tightened in remembrance of the moral difficulties he regularly suffered relaxed, a small smile evidencing itself on his thin lips.

Without waking, the boy (though he could scarcely be called such when he was so obviously not, both in physique and in mind), reached up to brush a lock of midback length ebony hair that had escaped the ponytail at the nape of his neck from his face, the quiet night air aiding his sleep as a sigh escaped him, curiously sounding _almost_ like the whispering of a name…

A name that recalled fields of flowers and cherry blossoms.

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><p><em>And that's it for chapter one. You know the drill; drop me a line, tell me what you thought. In the meantime, I'll be working my butt off to get some updates in as a Christmas present to the fans. No excuses, just results. Thanks for reading, guys!<em>


	2. A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

_This story got really good feedback for something that I came up with while I was playing around with my deck of cards (yes, I do actually know how to do this fortune telling jazz, for those that were wondering how I came up with something like this), and even though everyone was super excited for it to be non-massacre… I have changed my mind. I just couldn't think of a good angle to come from with it that way, and even though it's been overdone, I think I can pull off a canon story with this. Fate has a funny way of changing things, after all… Anyway, I would suggest going back to read the first chapter again, since I changed some parts of is to accommodate the switch in direction (and being left behind while reading is never a comfortable experience), and I hope you will stick it out with me for this despite the difference. Ratings and warnings still apply._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I would be far more rich and far less cold right now if I did._

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><p>A Stitch in Time Saves Nine<p>

* * *

><p>Time stands idle for no man.<p>

The silly game of cards was forgotten, the party and the storm and the fear lost to distant memory.

The world turned, and saw both happiness and tragedy.

The Third Hokage fell; Sasuke was marked and began his descent into darkness. Naruto discovered himself through a master who knew his pain; Sakura declared her love and became a person she had never known she could be. Tsunade took her place as Gondaime, Gaara was redeemed and knew peace, and Hinata found strength and courage in one who did not even know he had it. Ino came to know the taste of loneliness, Shikamaru took on the mantle of a leader, and, when confronted by her worst fear, Ten Ten discovered she was not made of stone as she had once thought.

The whispers of war raised their inevitable heads, beckoning to the too near future. Akatsuki became a name that parents murmured fearfully behind closed doors, bogeymen that haunted the worst nightmares of ninja and civilian alike. Needless death abounded, morals clashed and destroyed friends and enemies without distinction, and, though its approach was slow and lethargic, night crept over the land and cast both heart and mind into shadow.

Discontent and blackest distress roiled in the depths of the people's souls… and one man slowly drifted from the path he had been meant ot take, hypnotized by a person he had only ever seen in his dreams.

No one knew that the gods had changed the way the future was formed; no one would realize until it was far too late. No one would ever see the time when the man had been meant to die, or learn of his selfless sacrifice for one who would not care, or know the tragedy of a world plunged into darkness and loathing and misery without him. No one would have the power to stop the way that the years would unfold, and all the changes, all the transformed destinies and misplaced events, could be attributed to the selfish words of a foolish, love-struck little girl.

Haruno Sakura had angered the gods, altered the future, and did not even remember.

* * *

><p>"Ow! Watch what you are doing, Ugly: I'm going to need that leg later."<p>

"Funny that you should mention that right now, _Sai_, when I'm trying to fix the injury you got from fooling around with Naruto; if you hadn't decided to be clever and push him, he might not have grabbed your leg on the way down from the tree and we wouldn't be here, pulling half a branch out of your thigh."

"How many times do I have to tell you that I did not push him? I tripped and fell into him."

"And how many times do I have to tell _you_ that shinobi don't trip? You were playing around, got what was coming to you, and that's that. Now be quiet and let me work, or I might mess up, your leg will get infected because I missed something, and then we will be forced to amputate it to keep you from dying."

"Once again you demonstrate your pig-headedness and lack of reason. Very well, I will be quiet, but only because I am done speaking with you."

Sakura glared at the dark haired boy leaning his back against the tree trunk for a second longer, checking to make sure that he was going to keep his word (she got a flat look and a "hurry up" hand motion for her trouble), before returning to her work, accompanied by the chuckles of Kakashi and Yamato. Naruto deliberately ignored his other male team member, turning his nose up and rubbing at his bruised head pointedly while, in the distance, the sun continued to descend from its zenith, evidence of the time that was wasting away. She rolled her eyes, tugging on a piece of wood that was stuck in her teammate's skin a little too violently; this little side trip was taking way too long, and now they were going to be late reporting in.

Sakura _hated_ being late.

She sighed, shaking her head and digging out what looked like the last splinter of birch from Sai's leg. It honestly couldn't be helped; not only had the mission taken longer than expected, with the sudden storm blowing through that morning and the surprise rogue ninja attack when they had gone through the wrong village at the wrong time, she really shouldn't expect to be on time for anything with the team she was on. Kakashi had never cared about timing (though he could be remarkably punctual when it came to the new releases of Icha Icha), Yamato, while usually serious and responsible, idolized Kakashi too much to be of any use, Naruto would forget what he was doing if a butterfly flew past his nose, and Sai… well, Sai was Sai. If it suited his purposes and sense of humor at the moment, he would do everything he could to make them late, just because he knew it made her angry.

He was just a dick like that sometimes.

A smile quirked at her lips as she thought that, her unspoken rivalry with the painter nin a source of both amusement and annoyance, before dropping into nonexistence, a melancholy grimace overcoming her momentary grin. She never would have acted this way with the team member that Sai had replaced…

Her throat clenched. Sasuke…

It had been almost three years since he had left. She didn't understand how it could feel just like yesterday that she had begged him to stay, that she had told him she would give everything for him, and yet, every time she looked back, it felt like more than a century ago. She had grown in so many ways (more than just in body and mind) that she didn't even feel like the same person that had been left behind that night.

And yet, even with all the pain he had caused and all the hurt he had dealt and all the rejection she had suffered… she still loved him.

Sakura clenched her jaw, resenting the heartache that sprang into her chest every time she thought of how little Sasuke cared and how much she did, and then shook her head sharply, dismissing her despondency altogether.

She wasn't a little girl anymore, helpless and love stricken and useless. She had her own power now, skills and techniques and knowledge that few could claim to match, and the past was what it was: the past. She couldn't change it (she wouldn't even if she could; she wouldn't be who she was today without it), and though some nights she couldn't even sleep for the helpless anguish she felt over the loss of her first love, she knew that things were out of her hands now. If he returned one day, perhaps he would change his mind, but that was as unlikely an event as Ino losing the same hope that she did.

She would never forget him, and would love him for the rest of her life, but holding on to the person he once had been would end in nothing but misery. He was different, they all were, and nothing would ever be the same.

It was best she moved on with her life.

She snorted lightly, sterilizing Sai's wound as best she could with water and beginning to wrap gauze bandages around the raw, ragged hole he had inflicted on himself. Like that would ever happen… she would end up an old maid, still pining over her long lost love, and she knew it. It's not like she would ever be able to look at another man the way she had Sasuke…

"That ought to do it," Sakura chirped as she tucked the end of the bandage in beneath the rest of it, hiding away her depressive thoughts and patting Sai's knee encouragingly as she stood up, before gesturing at the reclining boy, extending a hand to help him up. "We're going to have to get you to the hospital when we get back to Konoha tonight, since you've lost a lot of blood and we didn't have any replenishing pills left, but the bandages should hold. Naruto," a pointed look was sent at the blonde haired shinobi, who glowered unhappily at the sky in response, "is going to be your crutch while we travel, but I've given him permission to "accidentally" drop you if you annoy him."

Sai, a little more pale than usual due to his blood loss, nodded weakly in response before draping an arm over Naruto's shoulders, strangely complacent to accept her orders without comment (he must be more tired than he was letting on), and the both of them hobbled off to the edge of the verdant oval clearing they had retreated to following the boys' shenanigans, a low toned exchange breaking out between them as they went.

Sakura looked after them for a moment, worriedly examining the pronounced limp in Sai's gait (would they be able to make it all the way back to the village without making his wound worse?) and dealing with a sudden, strange wave of disquiet that turned her stomach upside down when she glanced at the woods they had just left (there was nothing to worry about, they hadn't been followed… but nevertheless, something was bothering her about the trees; it was almost too quiet out there), before turning and walking over to where the older men of the group lounged in a wind whipped, century old pine tree, Kakashi engrossed in one of his "novels" and Yamato whittling determinately at a chunk of wood with his finger.

"Hey, Yamato. What have you got there?" Sakura queried curiously, hopping up onto the same branch as his, and the older man smiled shadily before showing her a miniature of what looked suspiciously like Sai lying prone, a twig sticking out of its leg and its limbs sprawled grotesquely.

"It's a present for Sai. I thought he would appreciate a memento of one of his finer moments, so I carved this out of the branch he skewered himself on," he muttered conspiratorially, a chuckle in his voice, and Sakura raised both of her eyebrows, tutting her tongue against the roof of her mouth and looking concerned.

"That wasn't very smart of you. You do know there are tales of people turning to wood themselves when they carve figurines out of birch…" she warned seriously, and then laughed when Yamato hastily threw the replica Sai out into the woods, patting him on the shoulder in apology for the joke. "You really shouldn't be so gullible, Yamato. It makes you too easy of a target for the boys."

Yamato huffed poignantly at that, folding his arms and sending Sakura a flat glare.

"And you pulling just as many pranks on me has nothing to do with anything, right?" he accused, and Sakura held a hand to her chest in faux offense, playing off his claim with feigned ignorance.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Me, play a petty trick for nothing more than my own amusement? You must not know me very well, Yamato… _everyone_ knows I'm an absolute saint. Am I right Kakashi?" she insisted plaintively, looking up at the man on the branch above them, and, without even looking away from his book, Kakashi grunted affirmatively, turning the page nonchalantly as he did.

Sakura looked back at Yamato with a matter of fact look, indicating the timeless wisdom of her teacher with one raised hand, and Yamato rolled his eyes, too used to being two timed to jump for the bait.

"If you say so, oh flawless one. Seriously though, is the idiot patched up yet? I hate being out here without all my gear…" he complained, clearly still lamenting over the loss of his well-stocked pack (it had been lost during the fight they had had with the rogue nin, which was more of a problem than any of them wanted to admit; he was the only one of them that consistently packed everything that was needed for a mission, and without his foresight they were sorely lacking), and Sakura nodded affirmatively, pointing over to where Naruto and Sai were, miraculously, appearing to have a civilized conversation.

"He's pretty rough at the moment, since the branch grazed his femoral artery and he's still tired from the fight earlier, but if we don't strain him too much, we ought to make it back to Konoha before midnight, and more importantly before his injury gets any worse. I don't have the right instruments, or enough chakra, to do anything more than I have," she explained, disappointed in the lack of what she could do when as drained as she was, and Yamato sobered, standing and sending a glance at a suddenly attentive Kakashi before looking back at Sakura.

"Sakura… we weren't going to say anything, since it's not exactly advisable, but since Sai's so bad off… Kakashi and I were talking, and we think it might be better if we take the night to let you and him rest. There's no guarantee that something else might not happen, and if he loses any more blood in his condition, and without the right supplies, you and he would both be in danger; we both know you would give every last ounce of your chakra to keep him from dying, and the last thing we need is two people who can't walk," he reasoned, putting a light, comforting hand on Sakura's shoulder, and she stared back, incomprehensive.

"Yamato, we can't do that," she said finally, breaking from her hesitancy with a jerky shake of her head and a wary, frightened glance at the swaying, disturbingly silent trees across the clearing. "We're still in Rain country, and they don't exactly like us right now. Besides, I don't know if Sai would last the night without his leg getting infected; I don't even have rubbing alcohol to sterilize his wound, and the last thing I want is for him to get any worse. No, he'll make it; I'll carry him the whole way if I have to," she resolved, futility creeping into her heart over the dire situation, and Kakashi shook his head, pushing his book back into his jacket pocket and jumping down from the tree.

"If it comes to that, we will take turns carrying him. Don't be so hard on yourself; if you could do anything more, I know you would. But it can't be helped; we'll just have to do the best we can with what we have. If you're sure about making it back in time to get him the help he needs, then that's what we need to do," he asserted, walking away with his hands in his pockets, and Yamato patted Sakura's shoulder once more before hopping down to follow after Kakashi.

Sakura, touched but morose, stood a moment longer where she was, staring after the two older men of the grouping with empty eyes, suddenly doubtful of her advice. If both Kakashi and Yamato thought that it would be better to stop than to push their luck with being able to make it all the way back to Konoha, maybe it would be wiser to do that…

Pressing her lips together and shaking her head, Sakura pushed aside her misgiving, firming her resolve in her opinion. She knew what would happen if they stayed out even one night with Sai in his condition; she had seen the damage unchecked infection could do, and she wouldn't wish that sort of pain on even her worst enemy. Plus, she couldn't shake the nausea that had come over her earlier; it was like she was forgetting something, something important and dangerous, and that something was coming for all of them as they sat here like straw dummies. It was uncanny, and made the hair rise on the back of her neck.

They needed to get out of here, and fast.

Encouraged and surer of herself despite the nagging, ominous feeling of unease that gnawed at the edge of her mind (she hated feeling like this and not knowing why), Sakura too leapt from the tree, pushing back her alarm as well as she could and making her way over to her teammates, determined to show nothing but a brave face to those who were looking to her judgment and know-how for the moment. They had a long way to go just to get out of Rain, and even farther to get back to Leaf, and if they were going to make it, they were going to need all the positive reinforcement that they could get.

With the way that the day had been going, though, she should have known they wouldn't get far.

Within an hour Sai could barely walk, much less run or jump, muffled groans leaking past his firmly clasped lips every time weight was placed on his leg, and after another half hour, Naruto was wobbling in place under his arm, his head injury looking more and more like a concussion the longer that time went on. Kakashi tried to carry Sai for a while, insisting that Sakura save her strength when she tried to pull him onto her back, but when he almost fell fifty feet from a tree, more tired than he had revealed, Sakura put her foot down and, begrudgingly but with the knowledge that none of them could go further, suggested that they put up camp for the night.

Not one person disagreed.

_At least it isn't going to rain again_, Sakura consoled herself in an attempt at joviality, shifting to find a more comfortable spot on the fallen log she was sitting on as she watched the sun drift farther down towards the mercifully cloudless horizon, the smell of the bubbling cook pot Yamato was tending making her (and surely everyone else's as well) stomach rumble.

The setup of the camp was borderline slapdash, thrown together so hastily that it almost looked messy, but none of them could muster enough strength to fix it or even care, sitting, laying, or, in Sai's case, sleeping, where they had fallen and eagerly waiting for the food that Kakashi had graciously paid for, retrieved from the civilian town a little over a mile away.

And though Sakura pretended at a languid smile, her posture on the log suggesting ease and nonchalance, the niggling sense of threat that she had felt hours before would not leave her.

She could think of no reason for her worry besides for Sai's condition, and though she was concerned about how a night this late in the fall was going to treat his wound, it was not this that was twisting her insides into fretted, snarled knots. She had thought, for a short time while setting up Sai's tent, that it was because she was concerned that they were still in Rain country (if only on the border), but had dismissed this quickly; precautions had been taken to safeguard the camp, traps set up and a watch assigned to cover every hour of the night, and even if they were attacked again, Team Seven was not exactly a pushover.

No… she was not worried about the safety of her friends; they could defend themselves. It was something else… something on the far edge of her mind, like the feeling of déjà vu, or perhaps more like the opposite. It was unexplainable and surreal, like the adrenaline surge following coming too close to death, or smelling the rain long before a drop has fallen. She didn't know how, but she _knew_ that there was something out there.

She just couldn't wrap her head around what it could possibly be…

"Alright, food's done. Come and g-g-get it before I eat it all," Yamato slurred, yawning halfway through his half-hearted joke (he didn't even have enough energy to be facetious) as he replaced the cooking spoon in the fragrant stew he had thrown together, and Kakashi and Naruto immediately converged on the pot, ravenous and unwilling to wait even another minute for the warmth of a full belly and the comfort of their respective beds (Yamato had volunteered to take first watch).

Before they could empty the pot completely, though, Sakura called out a halt, standing up, retrieving the bowl that had been waiting at her side, and walking over to where the three men stood, giving each of them a reproving glare.

"I realize that we've had a hard day, but did _everyone_ forget that I said Sai needed the first serving?" she reprimanded, snatching the full bowl of stew out of Naruto's grip and shoving the empty one she held into his now vacant hands, and each of the waiting men muttered some sort of affirmation, shuffling their feet against the ground sheepishly. Sakura, too tired to be angry, just waved a hand at them and started to walk over to where Sai was sleeping, but was arrested when Kakashi called out to her.

Turning grumpily, ready to tell him to leave her alone and eat, Sakura found, instead of some parting comment, a bottle of sake being held out to her, the older man's eyes crinkled into a smile as he held the small jar out to her.

"I know it's not as good as rubbing alcohol, but it's better than nothing, and ought to let both Sai and you relax so you can get some sleep," he informed her, handing the full container of rice alcohol to her, and Sakura smiled gratefully, accepting it without hesitation.

"Thank you; this is going to help so much. I'll pay you back once we get home," she promised, pushing the bottle into her pocket with her free hand, but Kakashi waved a negating hand through the air as she spoke, shaking his head in tandem.

"I don't want your money, Sakura, and wouldn't take it even if I did. You don't owe me anything for something that needed to be bought," he insisted, clearly offended by the thought, but then stopped, looking deeply contemplative before going on. "If you really wanted to offer me repayment, though… you could tell me what's been on your mind ever since Sai fell. You've been more jumpy than Yamato is, and he's on the verge of a mental break without his bag. What's wrong?" he queried, as mysteriously observant as always (how he saw everything he did through the cover of that book she would never know), and Sakura took a deep breath, rolling her eyes and flapping a hand.

"It's probably nothing; just being paranoid," she claimed, reluctant to admit to her insecurities and alarm the rest of the group, and turned to keep walking, but Kakashi stopped her again, this time with a comment so acute that Sakura whipped around in shock, staring at her former sensei with wide, startled eyes.

"It feels like we're being watched, doesn't it?"

Sakura stood in silence for a moment, too taken aback by the man's summation of her fears to react, but recovered quickly, looking over her shoulder before leaning close to the waiting Kakashi.

"Do you know who it is?" she asked below her breath, not bothering to deny it and so nervous that she could barely keep ahold of the bowl in her white knuckled hands, but Kakashi shook his head once more, looking over to the edge of the small, sheltered grove they were in as well.

"I don't think anyone is actually there, since none of us have managed to get a read on any chakra signatures, but something is definitely not right. Yamato feels it too; he was telling me that he noticed that the animals were acting strange, and that the birds haven't made a sound all afternoon. He thinks that either there is a massive storm coming, or someone else is out there, traveling the same way that we are, and are just not aware of us," he expounded, and Sakura nodded, focusing on the conversation rather than the fact that there was, most likely, someone so dangerous out there that even the forest animals were afraid.

"And what do you think?" she pressed, swallowing heavily against the tight confines of her clenching throat, and Kakashi's gaze became flat and serious, one hand rising to gesture behind him at where Naruto and Yamato were eating enthusiastically, the small, now extinguished cook fire they were seated in front of emitting a single trail of pale white smoke that quickly dissipated in the gently blowing wind.

"I think that I'm glad that we used old, dry wood and put the fire out quickly. After that storm this morning, and with how clear it is and what little humidity there is, I highly doubt it's going to rain again before the weekend," he elaborated, the skepticism in his voice wry and humorless, and then looked back at Sakura, sighing heavily. "We have to assume the worst, Sakura. The best we can hope for at this point is that whoever it is doesn't notice us."

Sakura, more adept at seeing through illusions than she sometimes liked, was more than a little intimidated by anything that scared the man that she looked up to for leadership and advice, knowing better than to brush off his tension as mere sleep deprivation.

Anything that alarmed Kakashi was something worth fearing.

But there was no point, nor profit, in sitting here waiting for an axe to fall that had no guarantee of even appearing, so Sakura gave her old teacher a soft smile, shook her head, and gently pushed Kakashi back towards the ashes of the previously comforting fire.

"We won't get anywhere, or any less worn out, by sitting around worrying about it. Go eat up and get some rest; we've all earned it after today. And Naruto," she called out in an afterthought, leaning around Kakashi's shoulder to look sternly at the blonde boy. "Don't you _dare_ try going to sleep until I've had a good look at your head. I'm going to be awhile over here with Sai, since I can change his bandages and clean his wound right now, and if I come back and find you asleep I'm going to throw you in the first river I find. I'm going to need to watch you tonight whether you have a concussion or not; I don't need you never waking up."

She received a mimed okay from her friend in response (she really wouldn't have wanted a verbal answer anyway, with how full his mouth was at the moment) and a chuckle and a pat on the head from Kakashi as he turned to join the rest of the team, and with this approbation Sakura turned to go her own way, going the last few feet to the edge of the clearing where a hastily thrown together lean-to was pegged, pushing the flap of canvas in front of her out of the way, and ducking down to enter Sai's tent.

Rolled up comfortably in the middle of the cramped space in the one sleeping bag and assorted blankets that Yamato had managed to hold to (along with the tent; they had all been stored in one of the two scrolls he had kept in his back pocket because they wouldn't fit in his pack, the other containing a few necessary cooking implements), Sai blinked up at her owlishly, blinded momentarily by the light that she was letting into his sanctuary. She must have woken him up…

Feeling a little chagrined for pulling him out of some much needed rest, Sakura offered the shadowy eyed, sleep tousled boy a small smile as she set the steaming bowl of stew she held beside his covers, kneeling beside him as she did.

"How are you feeling, Sai? Did you rest well?" she asked gently, pulling out some new rolls of bandages and the bottle of sake as she spoke, and Sai, groaning in a way that pulled at the edges of Sakura's heart, sat up enough to look at her, sniffing hopefully at the bowl just out of his reach.

"Well enough, Ugly. Is that for me?" he demanded bluntly, uninterested in niceties as always, and Sakura, a bubble that she hadn't known had formed popping inside of her, pulled that food farther back spitefully, scowling and impatiently pulling at the zipper on the side of the sleeping bag.

"Only if you stop calling me Ugly. Seeing your past record, though, I'm sure we both know the likelihood of _that_ ever happening," she snapped, succeeding in pulling the zip down far enough to pull Sai's leg out of the bedclothes, but when she reached for it, eager to be done so that Sai's personality issues couldn't get to her, he pulled away from her, looking bewildered and self-conscious about her reaching under his blankets.

"What are you doing?" he blurted, leaning away as though her touch would burn him, and Sakura stopped, perplexed and thrown off guard. What in the world did he _think_ she was doing?

"I need to change your bandages, Sai. Kakashi bought some sake, so I can clean it the way it's supposed to be and we can both get the rest that we need tonight," she explained slowly, looking over Sai's posture and worried expression suspiciously (he appeared slightly flushed and was breathing heavily; had he thought she was going to hurt him?), and was yet again mystified when he calmed perceptibly, pushing his leg out of the blankets himself but, almost pointedly, keeping the rest of his lower body covered in the heavy sleeping covers.

Maybe he was really cold…

"Alright. Make it quick though; I'm starving," he replied brusquely, averting his eyes to the pole holding the tent up and appearing to bite his tongue in preparation for the pain, and Sakura stared at him a second longer, still taken aback by his seemingly random panic attack (was he delirious from the blood loss?), before shaking the awkward moment off and rolling Sai's pant leg up, quickly going to work on his old, soiled bandages.

The silence stretched while she fussed with both openings of the wound, a twitch escaping from Sai every few seconds as she checked for leftover splinters, dirt, and any other foreign substance that could nullify her effort to disinfect the ragged cuts. Mercifully she found nothing but a small pebble that she didn't know how she missed the first go around (which she quickly and angrily disposed of; how could she have forgotten something like that?), but as she made the last minute arrangements for the final, and most painful, part of her checkup, she couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable about how quiet it was.

Sai and she had never been particularly verbose with each other when he wasn't teasing her or telling her vital information about a mission. It's not that she had a problem with silence, or even him not talking to her… it usually meant that she was being spared the brunt of his strange sense of humor. She just… she had never been alone with him, just him and her, and that he felt that he had nothing to say to her when she was caring for him, had thought to bring him the best food and was trying to be considerate… it twinged a little, like a forgotten paper cut suddenly subjected to soap.

She had been treated this way before, and she didn't appreciate the reminder.

"Alright, Sai… I'm going to pour sake through the wound now. I won't lie; it's going to hurt like a bitch. Do you need something to bite on?" Sakura asked gruffly, keeping her eyes on her hands and forcing her way past the misplaced hurt that was clogging up her throat so he wouldn't hear it in her voice (it wasn't his fault that she felt this way; he didn't understand how emotions worked, much less how another person felt about the things he did and how they connected to people he had never even met), and Sai, after staring at her for a minute, shook his head, moving his gaze down to look at her hands as well.

_Brave_, Sakura thought as she picked up the innocent white bottle sitting beside her, the contents swishing in a deceptively pleasant way. _Most of the men I know would have been begging for me to let their leg rot off by now_.

A chuckle escaped her at that thought, Kakashi's fear of hospitals and Naruto's low pain threshold always a source of comfort, but it was quickly stifled; she didn't feel like explaining an outburst of hilarity to Sai at such a tense moment. It wasn't a pleasant experience at the best of times, as he usually misinterpreted her meaning (intentionally or accidentally, based on his disposition), but he definitely wasn't in the mood for jokes at the moment and might take her amiability on the subject of morbid humor seriously.

The last thing she needed was for him to laugh every time someone got hurt.

"If that's what you want. Just try to keep still, okay?" Sakura instructed, waiting for the accompanying nod that would signal Sai understanding her, and when it came, his lips as firmly clamped shut as she had expected them to be, she pressed a wad of gauze to the exit wound, changed her grip on the sake bottle, and poured.

It took a moment for the pain to sink in, but when it did… needless to say, Sakura now fully understood why anesthesia was usually administered for procedures like this.

When the first wave of pain hit him, Sai's back shot ramrod straight, a deep inhalation against gritted teeth accompanying clawed, white knuckled fingers sunk into his blankets and trembling limbs that, while uncontrollable, were not yet a burden. The second sent a grunt of pain through his crumbling control, hastily gulped air a constant accompaniment in the suddenly suffocating closeness as his body attempted to find the strength to combat the burn of the alcohol. The third robbed him of all sense of decorum, however, a series of gasping sobs breaking free of his throat despite his attempts to stifle them, tears of agony escaping his squeezed shut and skyward turned eyes, and, in a desperate bid for something to ease the pain, one hand, shaking so badly that it was blurred to Sakura's own tearful eyes (she had _never_ seen someone feeling this much suffering; it was breaking her heart), extended to clasp around her arm, clutching at it as though it were the only thing keeping him from dying.

She knew it meant nothing, she knew that it was only because she was the closest living thing… but him reaching for her made something in her chest warm, something that she hadn't felt stir in a _very_ long time.

Sai managed to hold on to consciousness until the very end of the cleaning, the last of the pus and blood that Sakura wanted to rid him of being wiped away as best as she could with her arm being restricted like it was (his grip was so tight that the circulation to her fingers was being cut off, but she didn't have the heart, or inclination, to make him release her), but before she could even start threading the needle for putting in the stitches, satisfied with his chances of making it back to the village where he could be administered antibiotics, he passed out cold, his body too spent and stressed to stay cognizant any longer.

Sakura caught him as he fell against the side of the tent heavily, sidling him around until he was over his blankets again before laying him back, holding back the small smile that curved her lips when he nuzzled against her hand, seeking for warmth unconsciously in his forced slumber. She was going to have to wake him up to feed him, since she couldn't exactly run an IV out in the wilderness, but right now, considering his state and, admittedly, how peaceful he looked while sleeping… she supposed she could give him a few minutes to rest while she stitched and re-wrapped his leg.

It had nothing to do with how nostalgic he was making her feel, she assured herself sternly… he had just earned a reprieve.

As she cleaned up the mess of alcohol and sopping, blood-soaked bandages she had made (she had been forced to use almost the whole bottle of sake; it was a good thing that Kakashi had thought to get it) and sterilized the needle for closing up Sai's wounds, Sakura looked up at her sleeping team member, sobered and guilt-ridden by what she had just done to him.

She had _tortured_ him.

She shuddered, sickened by the thought. She had never seen anything like that happen to anyone before, much less done it herself, and she felt horrible for it. She knew that Kakashi had been tortured once, almost to the brink of living and dying, but she hadn't seen it in person, and even though she knew she hadn't been doing it vindictively, or out of a cruel sense of passion, she never wanted to take part in anything like this again. She could barely imagine how someone could look at a person in so much pain and feel anything but horror.

Anyone who could commit an atrocity like willful torture was surely soulless.

Shaking her head and putting her sudden moral standpoint out of her mind, Sakura threaded her needle, quickly and efficiently stitched Sai's wounds closed (she had never really liked this part; she was good with a needle and thread, but sewing skin is _always_ creepy),and then bandaged him up again, pleased with the quality of her workmanship.

It was a load off her mind, knowing that Sai was going to be fine… at least for the next day or so.

Silently congratulating herself and checking to make sure that the bowl of stew wasn't stone cold (it was still warm enough for her liking; he would be able to eat something like this and keep it down easily, and that was all that mattered), Sakura scooted over so that she was kneeling beside Sai's head, carefully drew a little of her nearly depleted chakra into the tips of her forefingers, and gently touched them to her patient's temples, stimulating the sleep center of his brain and tricking it into thinking that it has rested enough.

The effect was almost immediate; where normally his comatose state would have lasted anywhere from three to fifteen hours, Sai's eyelids fluttered open only two minutes after Sakura began her treatment (he had been out for about thirteen minutes at this point), comprehension slowly but surely leaking into his confused, blank stare.

"I passed out?" he asked tentatively, pushing himself up on his forearms shakily, and Sakura nodded placidly, helping him sit up so he could eat without spilling or choking.

"Yes, but not for long; you have to eat before you settle down for the night. Do you want me to feed you, or can you handle it?" she queried, picking up the soothingly warm bowl of meat and vegetables and displaying it within hand's reach, and, predictably, Sai sent her a flat, bland look (the closest thing he had to a glare), took the bowl from her, and set it in his lap pointedly.

"I am not a child, Ugly, nor completely invalid. When I no longer have arms, _then_ you may feed me," he scoffed tonelessly, quickly spooning food into his mouth in case she acted on her threat to withhold his meal by using his nickname for her, and Sakura rolled her eyes, indulging him for once. He did need to eat, after all.

She could get him back later, when he wasn't a cripple.

"Does it hurt too badly? Your leg, I mean," she asked after he had eaten about a fourth of the stew, settling as comfortably as she could against the wall of the tent beside him, and Sai looked up at her shortly, considering her question while chewing.

"No. Not in comparison to the treatment, at least," he replied at last, immediately going back to his meal, and Sakura flinched, stung by the barbed comment. Most people would have dodged around that fact out of decency for her feelings, since they knew perfectly well what kind of person she was and that she would never intentionally hurt one of her friends, but Sai did not understand political correctness or when to leave a subject alone.

Maybe it was better that way… no false faces and all that.

"I… I'm sorry," she said in an undertone, drawing her legs in close to her chest and hugging them insecurely, and, clearly confused, Sai lowered his bowl, staring at her like she had suddenly grown antlers.

"Why?" he queried curiously, leaning back so he could see her face around her knees, and Sakura, red-faced and ashamed and oddly flustered, averted her eyes so she wouldn't have to look at him, sighing and tightening her fingers on her forearms.

"I hurt you, very badly, and I feel terrible because of it. If I had prepared better… if I had thought to save more chakra… if today hadn't sucked so _goddamn_ much, I wouldn't have had to do things this way. That's why, Sai… I'm sorry because I failed, and that you had to suffer because of that," she explained, swallowing against her feelings and so close to tears that she was getting a headache from keeping them at bay, and Sai furrowed his eyebrows, shaking his head and turning back to his dinner.

"It doesn't make sense to be sorry for something that could not be helped. You are only wasting worry on it. This is typical of women though, as I have been told repeatedly by the lazy one, so I suppose you can be forgiven," he assured her with a verbal shrug, spooning another mouthful of food into his mouth while gazing at her matter-of-factly, and Sakura, catching on to what he was trying to say, smiled against the back of her hand, grateful and reassured. He didn't hate her for hurting him.

She felt profoundly comforted; she hadn't even realized that she had been worried about how he would feel about her now, but there was no mistaking her relief in his understanding.

Silence fell between them once more, but of the more comfortable kind, and Sakura was perfectly content to let it rest that way for the rest of the time that it took for him to finish eating, relaxing in the calm quiet with a friend (yes, she admitted grudgingly; he was her friend, even with the offensive nickname and general annoyances), but her empty stomach was not as complacent, and, when only the dregs of Sai's meal remained, nothing more than the grainy meat broth and smallest chunks of potato left to be consumed, Sakura's stomach gave a loud, plaintive rumble, breaking the silence more effectively than a gong.

There was no pretending her companion hadn't heard it, either; Sai had looked up at her sharply immediately following the grotesque noise, a frown on his lips.

"You have not eaten," he said archly, an accusation plain in his tone and the weight of his stare, and Sakura flushed for what felt like the thousandth time, averting her eyes and shaking her head while attempting to control the color in her cheeks (what was she blushing for so much? It was just Sai…).

"I needed to get you taken care of first. Priority goes to the patient before the attendant," she recited in a murmur, flicking at a rock on the ground so she would have something to do, and Sai huffed, unimpressed with her explanation.

"And what use will you be to anyone if you faint from hunger? For someone so smart, sometimes you are _very_ stupid," he said shortly, a hint of anger in a voice that rarely showed any inflection, and Sakura, ashamed to be being told off and annoyed to have it be him that was doing it, turned on him with a growl, provoked and indignant and, once again, feeling spurned by his not realizing that she was just trying to make sure that he was well taken care of.

Why did men _never_ understand?

"Well _excuse_ _me_ for giving a damn, Sai. I wanted to make sure that you got the nutrition and care that you needed so that you could get better sooner, and if that interfered with your delicate male sensibilities, you have my apologies. It won't happen again," she spat, seething and yet cold and brittle inside (like the first frost of winter, just waiting to break into tiny, quickly melting pieces), and beside her, Sai quieted, inspecting her in the way that she had learned he used when memorizing something. Usually she gave him the time that he needed to absorb the information he was acquiring, but she wasn't in the mood.

She had to get away from him before she did something drastic… like punching him.

Lurching to her feet unsteadily, a little desperate to be gone, Sakura picked up the almost empty bowl sitting beside Sai, very nearly spilling the rest of its contents everywhere in her distraction, and made to duck out of the tent, but as she was pushing the flap of rough canvas out of the way, just catching a glimpse of Yamato and Naruto talking about something with serious expressions, Sai reached out a hand and grasped her ankle, bringing her to a halt. Irritated and not appreciating his tenacity, Sakura glared down at him.

"What _now_?" she snarled, roughly pulling her leg from his grasp, and Sai, with a snort directed at her behavior, indicated the small mound of medicinal supplies she was leaving behind.

"You are forgetting your things, Ugly. I am sure you do not want to have to come back for them once you have stormed off," he informed her superiorly, as though he couldn't imagine why she was so angry in the first place, and, for a crazy moment, Sakura was tempted to dump the rest of his stew on his head and just leave, but he was right, unfortunately; she still needed to look at Naruto's head, and she would need, at least, her bandages.

With a sigh, suddenly drained and tired and just plain _done_, Sakura knelt back down beside the reclining boy, placed the bowl on the ground, and began gathering up her supplies, glancing at her watchful companion from the corner of her eye wearily.

"Why do you do that, Sai? Call me Ugly? Can't you see that I don't like it?" she asked him resignedly, re-rolling one of her rolls of gauze, and Sai sat up again, his hands laying one on top of the other in front of him. He was pensive for a long moment, just watching Sakura as she packed up her needle and medical thread while he thought about something, and then shrugged, indifferent.

"Of course. That is why I do it; because you don't like it. You are amusing when angry… your face gets very red. Like your shirt," he said observantly, nonchalance in every syllable of his reply, and Sakura laughed weakly, nodding and putting the cap back on the sake bottle.

"Yeah, I kind of figured. That's who you are, after all…" she muttered, almost to herself, but beside her, Sai shook his head, reaching out and picking up the last roll of bandages on the ground just as she was reaching for it.

"But as much as I like to annoy you for your reactions, that is not why I started saying it. When I was first assigned to Team Seven, I, as you know, was deficient in socializing with other people. I was given much misguided advice on how to remedy this, most of which ended up leading me to pornography and marriage council advice manuals," he informed her stoically, closely inspecting the gauze padding in his hand while, beside him, Sakura listened doubtfully, wary of another jab at her pride. She really didn't need another one of those today. "One book of these, however, seemed to be a useful catalogue of the female psyche, and thus I took its scripture to heart. I have since learned that most of it is nonsense, but what originally lead me to calling you Ugly was the proverb that, apparently, women dislike being called what they truly are."

Sai paused for a moment, an exaggerated motion that, from anyone else, would have been for effect (for him, it just looked like he was working up the nerve to say something), before finishing, glancing up at Sakura with significance.

"Ugly is far from what I think you are."

It took a minute for his meaning to sink in, one that she spent staring at him incomprehensibly, but when it did she was left speechless, shocked by the implications of his explanation. This was the last thing that she had been expecting from him when she had asked him about her ridiculous nickname (even saying last was overstating it; it hadn't even been in the spectrum of her consideration), and she didn't know how to react to it.

He… he thought that she…

"I… Sai, I…" she stammered, unable to put her scrambled thoughts into coherent speech, but Sai held up a hand, the corners of his mouth turning up in a small, rare smile.

"Nothing needs to be said. I just wanted to let you know," he assured her, shrugging one shoulder, and Sakura, heart jumping around erratically in her throat, felt the confines of the tent close in on her, the possible foot between her and Sai suddenly too warm and too electric.

She felt her pupils dilate, her breath quicken; she was suffocating beneath the weight of the world, but as light as air. Sitting here looking back at a boy who had admitted to thinking something so nice about her, him watching her with those dark eyes from behind that shaggy, ink black hair, strong and mysterious and miraculously _there_… it was what she had wanted from _him_, all she had ever wanted, and that it was abruptly here, regardless of the fact that it was with someone else, made her feel whole again, like she didn't need to pine over what had never been any longer.

She was leaning towards him, as though pulled in by a magnet; she couldn't have stopped it if she wanted to. He was leaning too, looking so deeply into her eyes that it felt as though he was touching her soul, and she barely registered what it could possibly mean, feeling only the joy of being accepted and the fear of the unknown and confusion over what was happening to her.

He was reaching for her, his hand rising to touch her cheek as their lips drew even nearer…

It really shouldn't have come as a surprise that everything crumbled the way that it did; her life always fell apart when something good was about to happen. Regardless of how she felt, or how happy she could have been, the warm, close moment ended with a crack like a bullwhip and a thundering boom that made her nearly jump out of her skin, static and shocked reality making her hair stand on end as she scrambled self-consciously backwards, eyes wide and searching as she tried to find the ear shattering noise.

"Was that lightning?" Sai queried as Sakura, marginally recovered from her freak out, crawled over to look outside, turning as far as he could to see out of the tent flap that she was gazing out, and, with apprehension, Sakura nodded, gawking with bewildered astonishment and a heavy blush at the top of the tree right next to the tent (what in the world had she been _doing_?), the shattered, flaming mass of pine boughs it bore filling her with a dread that she did not understand.

The sky was dark from the now fallen night, lit only by the generous light of the full moon, but was completely clear of clouds… what the hell was going on?

"Come on, Sai, we have to get you out of the tent. Those branches could fall any second," she said hurriedly, ducking back inside to help the hampered boy to his feet (and determinately avoiding meeting his eye; she wasn't ready to face what any of that had meant), and then led him out to where the rest of the team were gathered (Kakashi looked a little drowsy, most likely having been wakened by the lightning strike), setting him down on the flattest of the logs laying on the ground before going back to gather up his pack and blankets.

"Does anybody know how the _hell_ that happened?" she asked when she had returned, bundling Sai up fussily so that he was comfortable and warm, and Naruto, shirtless for a reason that she couldn't comprehend (what was it with him and taking off his shirt all the time?), shook his head, putting a hand over his eyes to shade them and looking with baffled confusion at the now vigorously flaming tree.

"Not a clue. Yamato and I were just sitting here, talking and waiting for you, and out of nowhere this enormous bolt of lightning shot out of the sky and hit that tree. Scared Yamato so bad that he hit himself in the head with his cook pot," he informed her with a smirk, not above poking fun at the older man even in a serious moment, and Yamato glared at him before also stating his ignorance of the situation, his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted as he too considered the crackling plant.

"It's like he says; came right out of the blue. I've never heard of anything like this happening, not in weather like this," he claimed, turning to look at Kakashi for confirmation, and Kakashi nodded his assent to the summation, yawning widely behind his mask.

"I can't think of any reason for this to happen, not unless we're being attacked by someone who can control electricity. I don't know about any of you, but I can't sense any…" he mused, looking like he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but then fell silent, a sharp look in his eye and one hand raised to indicate silence.

They gave it to him, immediately going quiet and listening as well, and, almost as one, they all felt it; two very strong chakra signatures approaching from the north-east, _very_ fast.

"Shit," Sakura cursed, looking hard into the darkness where the still far off but quickly moving shinobi were located and backing towards where Sai was, ready to bodily lift him and run. "We need to get out of here while we still can, Kakashi; we can't fight like this."

Naruto murmured his agreement, making motions to join her by Sai's side, but Kakashi shook his head, still staring into the deep shadows of the trees where the moon didn't shine.

"We wouldn't get very far, Sakura, not with how fast they are. Their chakra level is high, but there are only two of them, and we can take advantage of our numbers, plus having the better lay of the land, to at least weaken them and slow them down so we _can_ get away. I would rather fight here where I can take my bearings than in the forest, in the dark," he recommended, standing his ground and moving into a ready stance, and Sakura, exasperated, threw her hands into the air, growling at the sky angrily but knowing that it was pointless to argue with the tactician.

He was probably right, even if the idea sounded like suicide…

"Tch… alright. We should get ready to… no, Sai, you are staying right _here_," Sakura insisted, pushing down on his shoulder when he tried to stand up (and then immediately retracting her touch, flushing lightly; he had looked up at her _that _way, the way he had been in the tent, and she couldn't handle any more of that right now). "You can do your ink jutsu from here if you have to, but I would prefer it if you wouldn't fight at all. Got that?"

Sai, hindered in his attempt at helping, nodded reluctantly and settled back onto the log grumpily, pulling his pack over to himself so he could unpack his scrolls, ink and brush, and Sakura, mollified for the moment, crossed over to where Naruto was fussing with his jumpsuit, sliding the sleeves back on and zipping it back up, and grabbed on to one of the ties of his forehead protector, pulling his head down to where she could reach it.

"Hey, hey! Ouch! What are you…" he began to protest, pushing at her hands when she started prodding at the dark purple bruising at his hairline, but Sakura slapped his hands away, glaring at him and using a miniscule amount of chakra to feel under his injury, checking for damage that couldn't be seen.

"I need to check this before we start fighting, Naruto; I'm not going to get a chance to later. Now hold still," she explained waspishly, worriedly following a small fissure along the top of his cranium back to its source. Yes, that was definitely a concussion… crap. "You've got a concussion, so no crazy stuff out there, alright? I don't want to see any of that weird chakra you let out sometimes until we can get you checked at the hospital."

Naruto nodded dutifully, but then winced and gave her a thumbs up instead (the nodding must have hurt his head), and, satisfied with his answer for the moment, Sakura turned to scan the area, looking for the best point of attack for her to utilize, but had her eye caught by the now flaming tent (one of the biggest branches on the tree had fallen onto it), thoughts of what the unfortunate lightning had interrupted overtaking her perusal of the small clearing.

Had Sai and her really almost…

Sakura smiled wryly to herself, glancing back to where Sai was sitting (he was fiddling with one of his brushes idly, staring blankly into the middle distance; was he thinking about something too? Her, maybe?), before shaking her head, putting the thought out of her mind for the time being. She didn't know what might have happened if they hadn't been bothered, but it's not as though it mattered now. The moment was gone, and unless it was replicated again some other time, it was always going to be gone; just another lost instant of potential in her life.

It was just as she had thought earlier… she was destined to be alone.

Sakura blinked, seizing upon one of the words that she had been thinking. Destined… that meant something to her. She didn't know what, or why such an underused word would suddenly worry her so much, but the same feeling she had been having all day, the one that was building into a poisonous latency even now, surrounded that word, and she didn't like what that boded.

Her mind felt like a piece of Chouji's salt water taffy, pulled over and over and over in so many directions that it no longer even resembled what it had started out as.

She would have considered it for longer, lost to her thoughts on the subject of something that she could not, for the life of her, remember, but was drawn from her reverie when, from behind her, came a blinding mental flash of chakra, issuing from the dark depths of the forest that Team Seven had anticipated the enemy to be coming from.

She had been distracted for too long… the approaching shinobi, now revealed to have scarily _enormous_ chakra levels, were within three hundred feet and she had forgotten about them completely.

Berating herself and deliberately ignoring the fear that threatened the edge of her mind (she was almost nauseous from the dizzying warning feeling), Sakura quickly strode over to Naruto's side, laying a restraining hand on his shoulder (he looked about ready to pounce) and, as an afterthought, moved a little closer to the roughhewn, sizable log laying just behind him.

Who knew if it could come in handy? It was better to be ready than not.

"Don't take any risks, stay together, and we should be able to get out of this. Be ready to run when I give the word; Naruto, you are responsible for helping Sai. If there is one stronger than the other, Yamato and I will take them. Understood?" Kakashi whispered hurriedly, locking eyes with everyone to ensure understanding while tugging up on his forehead protector, revealing his scarred, Sharingan wielding eye, and Sakura nodded, reaching into her back pocket and tugging her fingerless gloves on.

The enemy, fortunately, didn't seem to hear this, because they laughed suddenly (or maybe they had and were entertained by the bare bones plan), hearty and bone chilling and grating, before speaking, now close enough to see them and appearing, at the least for the moment, to be taken aback by their presence.

Sakura could imagine why; their chakra levels were so incredibly low at the moment that they could have been mistaken for trees.

"Well, _well_… just when we were beginning to think that that lightning was a freak strike, what should we find but the Kyuubi container and his little Leaf ninja friends, all safe and sleepy in their camp," called a rough, boisterous voice from the shadows filling the tree line, familiar enough to make trepidation enter everyone's hearts but not well known enough to identify the owner, before the hidden man laughed, a pair of vague, shadowed shapes dropped from the trees, approaching with slow, crunching footsteps that were almost deliberately, insultingly loud. "Did one of you guys do that? I guess not, considering the fact that setting a tree on fire in your camp is kind of stupid, but hey! We never would have known you were here without it, so no need to complain. But look at us… we're being rude, not even introducing ourselves when we're crashing a party. That's just plain inconsiderate."

Sakura, intimidated by what the still unknown person had called Naruto (Kyuubi? What...?) but refusing to give ground, made to step in front of the gathering of tired and confused ninja protectively, but Naruto beat her to it, pushing her back with a shake of his head before moving to the head of the team, assuming a defensive stance and glaring challengingly out into the darkness. The larger of the shadows, rising to what must have been over six feet, let loose another gruff guffaw (his cackling sounded like the laugh earlier had; he must have been the one to give himself away), clearly amused by this show of gallantry.

"Already tired of having us? A shame… I can be a real party animal. I really know how to _cut_ a rug," he chuckled, entertained by his own idiom, and then went on, the smaller (though still half a foot taller than her) person beside him peculiarly and unnervingly quiet. "You're being awfully accommodating, just letting us walk up without doing anything. It's a little disappointing… like you won't be worth defeating."

He laughed again, obviously easily entertained, but his companion was not of the same cloth, however, and spoke up at long last, his deep, resonating, and, while not identifiable, thoroughly frightening voice sinking icy daggers of trepidation into the flesh of all that heard it. What followed a moment later lent more clues to recognition, however, because as the menacing, mysterious presence of the yet unknown men drew nearer, the glow of hazardous, cautioningly bright red eyes came into view, and with them a tightening in Sakura's chest, her heart seizing as a hope sprung to life that she immediately pretended that she hadn't felt.

Could it be… Sasuke?

She dismissed this notion immediately, however; she knew her Sasuke's eyes (no, she needed to stop being a delusional head case; he wasn't hers, he never had been and never would be), and the ones that stared, unblinking and disparate and cold, from the pressing darkness were _not_ his. These were evil eyes, eyes that had seen bloodshed and taken lives and gazed out of an emotionless, hardened, and malicious soul. These eyes belonged to the only other person who owned a full set of Sharingan in the whole world, and her body shuddered in foreboding from just the knowledge of who was approaching.

The person who had murdered everyone in his clan in a single night. A spectre that still haunted the worst nightmares of those that remembered the carnage he had wraught. The man who had driven his own brother to treachery...

Uchiha Itachi.

"Kisame, I believe you have said enough. While you antagonize them they lie in wait on ground that they have familiarized themselves with, and this gives them an advantage. While coincidental, we now have a job to fulfill, and I would like to avoid a long, drawn out battle if possible," he intoned blandly, straight to the point and decisive, and the larger man, now identified to be Hoshigaki Kisame (two Akatsuki, right when they were greatly weakened; they should have run when they had the chance. The universe clearly had something against them today...), huffed indignantly but didn't question his younger and more diminutive partner, showing a respect for the man that shocked Sakura.

To have earned the absolute deference of a being such as Kisame… she knew Itachi was a force to be reckoned with, but men like the Mist missing-nin answered only to sheer power. He must be a much more terrible foe than the bingo book let on…

"Alright, kid, alright. Just trying to have a little fun with them. Down to business it is, then," Kisame acquiesced, petulant to have been stymied in his taunting but acknowledging of Itachi's command, and then finally stepped into the light the full moon gave the Leaf ninja to see with, grinning at all those present with sharp, angular teeth while, at his side and so silent that a shiver ran up Sakura's spine, Itachi revealed himself as well, inspecting all those present with quiet, purposeful distinction from behind his long, veiled bangs and the high collar of his black and red cloak.

Sakura immediately averted her eyes from his whorled Sharingan, as she was sure all her companions did as well. After his last run-in with the Uchiha prodigy, Kakashi had beaten it into all their heads (with Naruto, this was in a literal sense) to _never_, under _any_ circumstances, look Uchiha Itachi directly in the eyes. They would be caught up into a genjutsu more powerful than anyone could break if they did when he had activated that part of his Sharingan, and while Kakashi had been left with only mental wounds as a result of his escapade in the Tsukuyomi…

They would, mostly likely, not be so lucky.

She would have been contented with this maneuver for the moment, settling for being on the heavily defensive while she tried to figure out a way to get everyone out of this encounter alive (and seething, within; so this was the man who had tortured Sasuke for so long...), had she not been distracted by the man that she was deliberately ignoring. From the corner of her eye she watched him finish his perusal of their small grouping, his eyes landing on her last, as she was farthest away from his position, but instead of doing as any other shinobi would have by directing their attention to the most threatening of the group (at the moment, that was Naruto; despite his dizzying head injury, he was the one with the most energy and was the closest to the enemy), he did a double take on _her_, staring at her for longer than was surely necessary following his first pass over with shell shocked disbelief that looked out of place on his angular, handsome (she didn't want to think it, but it was true; he was a good looking man, almost astoundingly so) face.

Unnerved but curious, Sakura resisted the urge to stare back, forcefully watching Kisame's every move as he swung the massive sword he used as a weapon down from his back, grinning wickedly at a defiant and glowering Naruto (she needed to keep him away from them; they were talking about capturing Naruto, even if she didn't understand why, and she would not allow that). There was no reason that she could think of for him to be so focused on her; she had heard a significant amount of information about him, mostly from the bingo book and Kakashi's singular retelling of his encounter with him three years in the past, and had seen many photos of what he looked like (for the purpose of identifying him in the field), but had never actually met him in person, so there was no call for him to look like he recognized her. There was nothing extraordinary about her that would make her more of a threat to him, most especially in her condition…

Why in the world was he reacting like that, then?

His astonishment could have lasted no more than a second when it smoothed back into calculating firmness, one more lingering glance shot at her before his gaze was moved to where both Kakashi and Yamato had advanced challengingly on him on the other side of the clearing, but Sakura remained perplexed, unsure of what his attention portended for the coming battle. Maybe nothing; she could be overreacting completely because of how tired she was.

It wasn't completely out of the question.

"Looks like we're about half and half on this one, eh 'Tachi? I'll take the pink haired brat and the Kyuubi, and you can take the two old guys and the cripple! Bet we can be done and out of here by ten," Kisame crowed enthusiastically, looking over his shoulder at his partner, and, in a barely discernible motion, Itachi nodded his head, watching Kakashi closely as the older man raised his hands in preparation for forming one of his many jutsu. Sakura wasn't bothered by his claim, confident that together, she and Naruto could run the Mist missing-nin down significantly enough to get away, but Naruto, as always, boiled over at the dismissive assertion, bristling indignantly and pointing a threatening finger as Sakura sighed, sliding the edge of her sandal under the log beside her.

The idiot would never learn to keep control of his temper…

"Hey! Don't think that you can take us out that easy, Sharkface! We're going to smear you all over the ground! Believe it!" he shouted, insulted to be being taken lightly as usual, and Kisame chuckled, tilting his head back and directing his laughter at the sky.

"Tough words, kid; I'd like to see how you plan to make that happen. Talking is boring though. Let's see what you've got!" he enthused, pointing his sword at Naruto as though the massive blade were made of paper mache, and Naruto, too incited to be reasoned with, leaped forward with a yell, calling up a ball of Rasengan to aid him as he aimed a punch at his opponent's stomach. Kisame, however, miming a yawn with his free hand, swatted him away like a fly, sending him skidding away towards where Yamato, Kakashi, and Sai were readying to do battle with their own enemy.

"You're not going to get anywhere like that, fox! You'll just wear yourself out! Ah, well, you know what they say; ignorance is wasted on the youth," Kisame misquoted, spinning his sword idly in his grip while Naruto whipped around hurriedly, getting his bearings as quickly as he could with his injury, and then sank into a battle stance, grinning widely. "You had your chance. Now it's _my_ turn!"

He lunged, pulling Samehada back to swing it in a wide arc that would deal damage that Naruto couldn't handle, but Sakura was ready, kicking the log she had been sneaking her toe under into her arms, throwing it across the small clearing to knock the oversized, chakra sapping sword from the unsuspecting and shocked Kisame's hands, and then launched herself at the huge shark man as well, locking her fingers together and then smashing them in front of his feet before he could react, releasing a good chunk of her remaining chakra into a glancing blow that would knock a building over.

He seemed very surprised to be disarmed and sent flying through the air at such short notice, launched airborne by the wave of earth that her attack had made.

He landed, with a sound like a hundred mallets hitting the side of a cliff, against the wide trunk of a very distinguished looking ash tree, slumping into a heap at its foot in startled paralysis. He stared at her in astonishment for several seconds following her offense, apparently stunned speechless and immobile, but Sakura was not drawn into a false sense of victory; she had not really hurt him, only drew his attention away from her less able (at the moment) teammate, and even if she _had_ managed to dispatch the Mist missing-nin, there was still a much more dangerous foe to be handled, and she had just revealed a large part of her abilities to him.

Not to mention drawn his attention as well; while he had been previously occupied with his tete-a-tete with Kakashi and Yamato, Itachi was now focused, once again, entirely on her, and she did not like that at all.

Not one bit.

Kisame, from his position on the ground, recovered marginally from his astonishment at Sakura's unexpected strength with a groan, rubbing a large hand over the back of his head contemplatively before grinning widely and jumping to his feet, the fire of battle and contention in his beady eyes.

"So the little girl likes to play rough. Come on then, bitch; let's dance," he called out exuberantly, pulling Samehada out of the ground where it had landed one handed and beckoning to her challengingly with the other, but before she could even step forward to accept his dare, counting on Naruto to take the hint and escape while he could, she was suddenly facing a very different opponent; Itachi, one hand held out warningly to Kisame and eyes locked on Sakura (she stumbled backwards hurriedly and dropped her gaze to his chest, a chill of foreboding running up her spine), had stepped in between the two more quickly than any but Kakashi's eyes could follow, now completely ignoring his previous opponents.

"Take time to notice your enemy's strengths and weaknesses, Kisame; she very pointedly found ways to avoid physically touching you and your sword while still dealing large amounts of damage. She is aware of your abilities, has studied your behaviors and tendencies well enough to predict them, and very easily distracted you from our errand. There is no call for an all-out war simply because you have found a strong, intelligent opponent; since she has you marked, I will handle her," he lectured, never once even glancing away from where Sakura stood despite the threat of the other shinobi present, and Kisame gawped, indignant.

"Aw, come _on_, Itachi! You always get to fight the strong ones… I was just going to play with her a little; it wasn't going to take forever," he whined, but Itachi did not give ground, motioning with one hand to where Kakashi, Yamato, Sai, and Naruto (who was being helped up from the ground beside Sai's log by Yamato; he had been knocked flying by her attack as well, completely isolating her while the rest of the team was left on the far end of the clearing. Well there went _that_ part of Kakashi's plan...) were grouped, as staid and unmoved as stone.

"There are plenty of other foes, Kisame. They will all need to be dispatched so that we can secure the Kyuubi; I am sure you can find some creative way to entertain yourself," he reasoned, clearly used to his partner's tempers, and Kisame, though still looking sulky, shrugged his massive shoulders and turned to the other four of the group, flashing them a sharky grin.

"Oh, I'm sure I can; just don't take any pity on the girl. Deidara almost got skewered by some chick in Rice last week because she was pretty… women are too distracting for their own good," he mused laughingly, hefting his sword onto his shoulder as he swaggered off, and, below his breath but loud enough that Sakura would swear on her life that she heard, Itachi muttered a response, an expression that looked vaguely like chagrined amusement shifting his lips upwards for a sliver of a second.

"_Irony is too kind a term…"_

Sakura furrowed her eyebrows, confused by his reminiscence, but immediately shoved her concern to the side; Itachi's nostalgic and momentary softness had faded into battle sharp keenness, and it quickly became clear that she was being analyzed. She straightened out of her interest, determined to show a brave face to an enemy she knew she could not best, but her body betrayed her: fear made her fists shake where they were clenched in front of her and, despite her best efforts, she couldn't keep the beat of her heart steady.

She refused to give in to despair so easily, though; if she was going to go down (and that wasn't necessarily a guarantee yet), it was going to be swinging.

Across the field, Naruto was having a conniption, shoving Yamato's hand off of his arm after he had been helped up and making to storm towards where Sakura and Itachi were facing off, looking between the two of them with both rage and worry.

"Don't worry, Sakura, I'll be over to help you in a second! Just hold on!" he shouted, unsheathing two of his shuriken as he spoke, but when he started to charge towards her, focused entirely on helping his needy friend, Kisame flashed in front of him, swung Samehada with the flat facing outwards, and caught him right in the chest, throwing him backwards into Yamato and sending them both to the ground in a confused heap.

"Not so fast, kiddo," the blue skinned man snickered as the two men attempted to untangle themselves, propping his giant weapon on the ground and leaning on it while the sword itself flexed, stretching its bandaged wrapped spines in anticipatory glee. "I'm gonna need all of you here to make this interesting for me."

Annoyed by the ineffectiveness of Naruto's charge, Sai also attempted to go to Sakura's aid, trying to stand from his perch on the log, but Sakura whirled on him with a severe glare, pointing a threatening finger at him from across the slightly swaying grasses.

"Sai, if I see you put weight on that leg I'm going to break the other one!" she called out angrily, frantic with worry for his well-being but knowing better than to show it in front of an enemy (Itachi was already watching her like a hawk for a reason that she couldn't understand; she didn't need him exploiting a weakness like this). "I don't want you ripping out your stitches and bleeding out getting over here, so just stay _put_. I need you to keep Naruto in line for me so he doesn't go over the top, alright? I'll be fine; there's only one of him."

Sai scowled at her, sinking back into place again ungraciously, but clenched his lips and nodded his understanding.

"Don't die," he replied, the sincerity in his voice and eyes making a blush rise despite her attempt to refuse it, and Sakura, touched without her consent, turned away from him hurriedly, swallowing nervously. Had Itachi noticed her reaction? She wasn't sure if he had or not, since she couldn't judge anything from his expression (he was looking at Sai with something hard in his eyes that, on anyone else, she would have called anger, but couldn't say for sure), but didn't have the time to dwell on it; she had to convince Naruto to take care of Kisame first, before he got himself killed trying to get over to her.

"And as for you, Uzumaki Naruto, don't you _dare_ let me hear you underestimating me like that ever again! I know that you can take that walking, talking fish stick with both hands tied behind your back, so you better know that I can handle myself!" she lectured in a rush, unsure of how long Itachi was going to stay dormant and let her talk to her team members (he seemed perfectly content to wait until she was done; probably because he knew she couldn't be planning anything that could do much to affect him), and from his position lying on the ground, still prone from Kisame's hard swing, Naruto laughed, slapping the grass.

"Gotcha loud and clear, Sakura. It may actually take one hand for Sharkface, considering I don't hit as hard with my head as you do, but I hear you. If anyone could beat teme's brother, it would be you," he gloated shamelessly, flipping up on to his feet with a pumped and fierce smile, and Sakura sent him a confident grin back (she didn't believe what he said herself, but perhaps she would be able to hold him off for long enough to get some aid from one of the others), sparing a glance for Kakashi (he pointed at his eyes with one hand, silently reminding her of his warning, which she nodded to) before turning to face the man she was meant to fight, swallowing back the wave of panic that came with glancing for even a second at the deadly black and red of his kekkai genkai.

God save her.

"Thanks for waiting," she acknowledged sarcastically, letting a warning wave of pale green charka flow over her clenched fists menacingly, and Itachi spared a sliver of a smirk for her jab, though it was gone before she could even be sure he had shown it.

"Of course, Haruno Sakura… it is our manners that separate us from the beasts," he replied calmly, expression so flat that she couldn't even tell if he was being antagonistic or not, and then his fingers were flying, a burst of red hot flame making her leap back quickly and barely giving her time to wonder over the phenomenon of him knowing her full name.

How did he know who she was? _Why_ did he know?

She wouldn't get a chance to think about it, either; not with how badly the fight quickly went. Within minutes she had been separated even further from the rest of the team than she had been before, driven into the forest and disoriented by Itachi's flurry of assaults and inexorable speed, and all too soon she was panting for breath and resorting to any defense that she could think of, harried and unsettled and kept constantly on the run by her opponent's might.

It had been too long since she had fought Sasuke, so long that she had forgotten the power that a full set of Sharingan could give, and in this she was deficient; she had overestimated herself, thinking that she could last long enough for her team to get there and help her. She was no match for the devastating advantage that the Sharingan gave her enemy… she had fallen to Sasuke's often enough that she should have remembered that. She could hardly compare the two men, though; where Sasuke had been a leaf in a gale, agile and pointed in his attacks, Itachi was the wind itself, swift and unseen and without mercy, moving in and out of range, to and from each position of his jutsu as though it was all a dance that she couldn't, for the life of her, get into step with.

He didn't speak to incite anger, he didn't tease or deride or waste time with banter, but devoted his all to the fight, concentrating his focus and logic and skill to precise, carefully planned strategies that were orchestrated specifically to her weaknesses, and when she realized, at long last, that she had no idea where she was or how far away the rest of Team Seven was, she knew for herself why the name of Uchiha Itachi was feared, even without having, as of yet, used any of his special techniques.

She flattered herself often by calling herself smart, but this man… this man was a genius, and she didn't have a chance in the world.

But even for all of the ignominy she had suffered so far, Sakura had known that he was a blasé, cunning, and powerful shinobi, logical and intelligent and considering in all that he did, and was thus watchful and patient, carefully observing his motions and waiting, sometimes it seemed without reason, for the right moment to strike. She had been presented with little concrete knowledge of his tactics thus far (as they always seemed to change just enough to throw her off, just when she thought that she had memorized them), but did not despair; if there was anything she had learned from Kakashi, it was to always have an extra plan, and to lie in wait until the moment was right.

It was for this reason that she found herself crouching in a prickly shrub, gasping for breath and trying to calm her heart while overseeing the progress of the clone she had just summoned as (hopefully) a distraction, her fingers dug knuckle deep in the wood of the tree she was hiding in the shadow of. She had managed to escape Itachi for a crucial moment by ensnaring him in a hastily thrown together web of chakra strings only a minute ago, delaying him just long enough to set up this trap, and intended to use this golden opportunity to its fullest.

Sakura had instructed the bunshin to run the instant that Itachi showed his face so he wouldn't have a chance to be suspicious of anything but the feeble snare trap that her clone was rigging up on the path, thereby opening himself to attack from the real Sakura, and would, if luck prevailed, be dispatched with just one hit.

She sincerely hoped this worked; she couldn't take much more of this.

They had been fighting for what must have been at least half an hour by now, and she hadn't even managed to _graze_ Itachi, much less hurt him, while she herself had more bruises and cuts and burns than she cared to count. She was bone tired, her chakra was almost completely demolished (she barely had enough to complete this one last coup), and her hands were shaking from a mixture of terror and lack of food; if she hadn't known better, if she wasn't completely sure that the man was a homicidal predator bent on the destruction of all that was good, then she would have thought that he was _testing_ her, trying her mettle and seeing how much hardship she could take and gauging her ability by what her most desperate strategies were.

There was no reason for him to act like that though, no reason that he should be so interested in her mind's capabilities if he was just planning on killing her, so she put the thought from her mind with a jerky shake of her head, ignoring the notion that whispered at the back of her mind (he had shown strange interest in her from the beginning of their encounter; why should this not fall into the same category of oddness?), and took one last breath before holding it, the unnatural silence heralding the approach of a foe more deadly than any base animal.

The clone a few feet away noticed the ominous quiet as well and lifted its head, staring apprehensively into the heart of the trees to where the deepest shadows lingered, and then flipped to the left hurriedly, fumbling for purchase on the rooted ground in her haste, before darting off into the darkness behind her, three kunai buried hilt deep in the earth where she had been standing not a moment before.

Her heel had only just vanished into the gloom when Itachi materialized from the cover of the trees in hot pursuit, sparing a glance for the trap clone-Sakura had lain before stepping around it and, unknowingly but amazingly (yes, yes, _yes_), running right where the real Sakura wanted him.

With a mighty heave, unaccompanied by the victory roar that she felt like letting loose (not only was her throat _way_ too dry for that, she didn't want to alert him too much in advance and give him the chance to dodge), Sakura released the rest of her chakra into a pull that uprooted the oak tree she was gripping, sent the plant a mental apology for its death, and then swung it at her enemy, catching him off guard and right in the head.

Of course, without fail, that was when everything went to shit.

With a twitch of the lip that was _definitely_ a smirk this time and a resounding bang that rivaled the lightning strike for its effect on her eardrums, the copy of Itachi exploded to devastating effect, sending Sakura, the tree she was holding, and about twenty others flying in every direction, leaving behind a crater that she might have envied in another situation and wreckage that would scar the land for many years to come.

Sakura landed in a broken heap about ten yards away, rolling into a ball to protect herself from shrapnel despite the overwhelming pain in her arm from where the tree had landed on it (god _damn_ it: broken… just what she needed), and when the chunks of wood and clumps of dirt that had been torn to shreds by the detonation had finally all fallen she shot to her feet and turned on the spot wildly, sick with diseased and visible fear. It was a clone… she had been fighting a clone…

Had she been the whole time?

She stared hard into the encompassing darkness that shrouded the unfamiliar and suddenly intimidating forest around her, her hearing pricked to its sharpest while her heart pounded in her ears and her breath shortened, listening for any noise that would give the hiding shinobi away (he must be close, probably within range of a thrown stone; he would have wanted to be at hand in case his plan, whatever it was, had fallen through).

It was possible that he had been suspicious of a trap when he had lost sight of her in the woods and had sent a clone ahead as a precaution, but her intuition told her differently; the whole time that they had been fighting Itachi hadn't used his Sharingan even once, not even to document what moves she had been using. She had thought this was strange, been a little offended, even, that he was so sure of himself that he didn't even need to use his kekkai genkai to defeat her, but it was so much worse than that; she had forgotten one of the fundamental basics of understanding illusions.

Clones could activate kekkai genkai, but were incapable of using them.

None of them, from the moment that the Akatsuki members had stepped into the moonlight, had realized that the real Itachi wasn't even there, had hidden himself away and sent a replacement in his stead so he could have time to prepare for a real battle, and now it was far too late.

Trembling in place, clutching at her useless forearm and stumbling backwards towards the nearest upright tree, Sakura swallowed heavily, keeping her eyes on all of her surroundings that she could at once and drawing her last remaining kunai knife from her leg sheath. She had been fighting a bunshin, a shade of the man himself, and been overcome; in a battle against the true power of the Mangekyo Sharingan wielder, especially in her state, she was more than helpless.

The realization that she had been fooled did not help her situation; it only made it more dire. She was tired and exhausted of her chakra and injured, alone in the middle of a forest that she would not be able to navigate with a ninja that had effortlessly outsmarted her, and could do nothing about it; she had been trapped not only physically, but psychologically as well, and had no choice but to wait for Itachi to reveal himself and put up the best fight that she could when he did.

It was silent for an unnervingly long time, the branches above her swaying in the breeze and casting dim shadows across the moonlit forest floor at her feet; it was almost calming, serene enough to be painted as a landscape portrait. Sakura did not relax, though, only gripping the knife in her fist tighter; he was out there somewhere, playing games with her mind that she didn't appreciate in the least, and she wasn't going to let him win that easily.

She wasn't going to be ambushed in addition to all of the other indignities she had suffered (being made a fool of and being shown that your power, even as weakened as it was, is insignificant are not typically morale boosters).

It came almost too quickly to be spotted; a rustling in the brush off to her right. She didn't spend a second considering or doubting, immediately sending her kunai flying in the opposite direction of the noise (the sound had been a distraction, it _had_ to have been a distraction), but quickly regretted it; at the same moment that the knife thudded, with the far too recognizable sound of metal hitting wood, into the trunk of one of the fallen trees, she was shoved backwards into the tree she had been using as a backboard, a strong, forceful hand locked around her throat.

Reverse psychology… the _bastard._

Sakura struggled against the taller man weakly for a moment, attempting to pry his hand away from her neck with her one good one while doing everything she could to avoid his gaze, but was stymied when he seized her wrist as well, holding it up next to her head discouragingly. Realizing that she was about to die, despair set in with a vengeance (she hadnt said goodbye to her parents... to Naruto... to Sai...), bringing with it the wish to just have it over and done with, and she resorted to the only rebellion she had left; she dropped her chin, glared hard at the edge of his cloak flapping in the night wind, and spoke.

"I may have lost, but have a little humanity for once in your life and kill me quickly. We are done here; there is no reason to drag this farce out any farther," she demanded, forcing her way past the tremor that threatened her words, and around her throat, Itachi's fingers loosened, moving up to grasp her chin in what felt almost like a caress, his fingertips lingering on her skin in a stroke that make gooseflesh rise all over her body.

What the hell...?

"Your death is still undecided, and will not be brought about by my hand even when its time has come. As for humanity… we shall see. But we are _far_ from done; we have words to exchange, you and I, and before the night is over the truth will be known," he muttered quietly, his voice for only her to hear, and then jerked up on her chin, forcing her to face him.

Sakura's heart jumped in her chest, taken aback by how close he was and how frightening his eyes truly were, and it was as she stared into the depths of the Mangekyo, trying to understand what he meant (he wasn't going to kill her? What was he doing then?), that Kakashi's warning leapt to life, burning everything but the mantra of avoidance from her mind. There was only one reason he would want her to look him in the eye, and it wasn't for the sake of propriety.

Oh god…

"No!" she shouted, twisting frantically to get away from the burning implication of her captor's gaze and squeezing her eyes shut in a desperate bid for relief, ready to face the possibility of death rather than the torture he had planned, but Itachi, not tired in the least where she was worn almost to the bone, held her in place effortlessly, firm and unmoving as a stone wall. He let her squirm for a moment, unaffected by her barks of denial and attempts to escape, before exerting his strength and slamming her against the tree trunk, unimpressed and irritated.

"Submit, or watch your friends die a slow and painful death because of your refusal," he ordered harshly, as cold and conscienceless as she had been told he was, and Sakura, broken by his warning (she couldn't let the rest of them die like that, not because of her…), stopped struggling, keeping her eyes closed for a second more before snapping them up to meet his, glaring with all the hatred that she could muster through her mind bending dread.

"Whatever it is you want to know, be prepared to be disappointed; you will get _nothing_ from me," she assured him, her jaw jutted in defiant bravado, and Itachi considered her for moment before letting out a toneless, smooth chuckle, wryly amused with her assertion.

"I doubt that, Haruno Sakura… I doubt that _very_ much," he replied, confident in his ability to extract the information he needed from her (he was probably right to be; he knew his abilities much better than she did), before activating the Tsukuyomi, his left iris spinning into a hypnotic whorl that sucked Sakura in with only a single rotation, careening her into the depths of his genjutsu without being given an opportunity to resist.

The first thing she thought, as she came to consciousness from what felt like a millennia long coma, was that she was dead; she felt nothing, no warmth or cool or even a whisper of wind, the air surrounding her body temperature to the nth degree and so still that it was almost unnerving. It would have made sense, to be dead; it was what she would have expected from coming face to face with one of Uchiha Itachi's renowned Mangekyo techniques. She wasn't dead though… she was in the Tsukuyomi, about to be tortured without pity for a reason that she didn't yet know, and she couldn't afford to forget that for a _second_.

The second thing she thought, when she had forced her eyes open and pushed herself up on one shaking arm (she may be in an illusory world, but her right arm was still broken; nothing was going to fix that but medical attention), was that she had been wrong about not being dead. This certainly _looked_ like what she had always imagined Hell to be; a vast wasteland of grey sand stretched far out across the landscape, all the way to the roots of the obsidian mountains that surrounded the bowl shaped, immense valley she knelt in the middle of, stabbing upwards like the sharpest of knives to scrape at a blood red, full moon crowned sky. Before her, extending smoothly from the motionless sands, rose a tall dais hewn from rock so black and shiny that it could have been made of glass, supporting, at the very top, a regal stone chair etched with a large tomoe and several symbols of the Uchiha clan's crest.

The Uchiha clan's crest? That couldn't be right… if she was dead, why would the keeper of Hell have _those_ on his seat?

The third thing she thought, as she tried to rise to her feet but was unsuccessful due to her discovery of the rusty but strong manacles around her wrists, attached by short chains to metal rings set immovably in the ground, was that she was _definitely_ dead, or at least going to be, because upon the throne at the top of the platform she was kneeling before, lounging with one leg crossed over the other, Akatsuki cloak spread dramatically over his seat, and arms lain comfortably on his armrests, had suddenly appeared the man who had brought her here, considering her in silence with eyes hued to match the environment surrounding him (or more like it was made to match his eyes; she was too anxious at the moment to differentiate or even care).

She didn't bother thinking anymore after that; Itachi's presence was more than enough to hold (and keep) her attention. How she had ever thought that his bunshin had been him she would never know, seeing him now; while Shadow clones were made to look exactly like their maker, down to reacting how they would in any given situation, there was simply no replicating the aura of dark intent and antipathy that this man radiated.

He was evil to the core, and his eyes, soulless and hollow and taciturn, were the only proof needed.

A fell silence dominated the seemingly never ending expanse of the imagined world, the two shinobi staring, one at the other, for so long that Sakura's kneecaps began to itch from the grains of sand biting into them, before, with the quiet swish of material against rock, Itachi sat up straighter, extending a hand to gesture widely at the horizon.

"The Tsukuyomi and I welcome you, Haruno Sakura. It has been the better part of a year since I brought anyone here… you should feel honored. Only the most deserving, and most dangerous, of my enemies have ever seen the inside of it," he informed her conversationally, sounding as though she should be _grateful_ to be there, and Sakura, sneering and wary (she should take nothing that she saw or heard at face value here; it may be an unbreakable genjutsu, but it was still an illusion, and she refused to be fooled again by him), pulled against the chains binding her, holding back the wince of pain that ran through her injured arm as she did.

"Forgive me for not being flattered; I'm more concerned with other things. Like why the hell I'm here in the first place," she spat, glaring at her captor hatefully, and Itachi, eyebrow raised just enough to convey his scorn, leaned his chin onto one of his hands, the other beginning to tap its forefinger idly on the armrest of his chair.

"I had thought that you understood the first time I said it; we have something to discuss. You should learn to listen much more closely; it is one of the weaknesses that you demonstrated during our fight, among many. You are strong, highly intelligent, resourceful, and agile, but lack the foresight and adaptability required for long term battle. Thinking better on your feet, most especially when as worn as you were, would have saved you the indignity of many of your injuries. Not wasting your remaining chakra on an exaggerated last stand like you chose to employ would have saved you the rest," he expounded, somehow managing to be antagonistic while not letting slip even the barest of smirks, and Sakura, despite her mental urgings (just ignore him, stay on topic…), fumed indignantly, flushing hotly when she realized she was being lectured on how best to use her shinobi skills by someone she barely knew.

She had opened her mouth to demand he keep his mouth shut over things he didn't understand, even though he clearly did with how well he had summed up their battle, but Itachi wasn't done, barging on through her attempt to defend herself as though unaware she had tried to say something, though the amused glint in his eye as he did made it clear that he had noticed.

"I do owe you some credit on that note, though… had I not had the premonition to send a bunshin instead of myself, your trap would have been very, _very_ effective; I am sure you would have broken my neck with that swing. Only to be expected of the personal protégé of the Gondaime Hokage, naturally… you are as clever, and detrimentally hot tempered, as rumor tells; had you been at full strength, I feel I would not have escaped our meeting as unscathed as I am," he allowed, giving her a nod of acknowledgement for the accomplishments that he had mentioned, and Sakura, feeling unfairly pleased by his words (she shouldn't feel anything but offense for his obvious sycophancy, but his commendations were making pride swell in her chest, and she didn't like that) but refusing to let it distract her, scoffed rudely at his compliments, impatient with his dallying.

"Do you really have time to waste with patronization? I am defeated, you have won; there is no need to rub it in. I don't give a shit what you think about how I fight; get to the point and stop changing the s-subject," she retorted in a growl that had been meant to be firm but finished in a squeak when her courage wavered (Itachi's easy, formless expression had hardened as she had spoken, sharpening his gaze into the first recognizable emotion that she had seen him wear for more than a split second: displeasure), and, at the top of the smooth stone steps, Itachi stood, the shadow he cast spreading down the stairs eerily.

"You would do well to take advantage of opportunities to better yourself; how do you expect to learn if you are not told of your mistakes?" he lectured neutrally, none of the ire in his eyes leaking into his words as he took the first step down from his dais, deliberately slow. "And for your information, I was attempting to be a gentleman by allowing you a respite; there is honor to be had in letting your opponent have the time they need to prepare for conflict."

He took another step, his cloak swirling around his feet without a breeze and the irritation in his gaze stripping all of her audacity away, and Sakura, suddenly possessed by the wish to be able to take her words back, tried to scoot away from Itachi's approach, petrified by everything from his anger to his mysterious interest in her education to the way he said her name (why did he keep saying it like that?).

"W-what do _you_ know about honor?" she barked out caustically, pulling uselessly at her restraints when they halted her retreat far too quickly, and above her, Itachi took another descending stride, shrugging one shoulder in way of indicating his opinion of her question.

"One may know of things without practicing them, Haruno Sakura; you are an experienced medic-nin, knowledgeable in all the forms and functions of the human body, and are thus aware of what processes lead to pregnancy, but I assume, perhaps too presumptuously, that you have not partaken in such acts yourself," he paralleled suggestively, the rage in his gaze transforming into something much sharper and harder (she did not know what it was, and could only think of hunger as an equivalent to it; she had seen something similar in the eyes of a man who had not eaten in weeks and was suddenly presented with a feast), his interest clearly keen on her reaction to this statement, but Sakura was not prepared, nor willing, to talk to him about something so private, blushing against her will that it had even been mentioned.

"That's really none of your business. I take your point, however, so… so… I just…" she attempted to assert, determined to direct the subject away from her opinion and experience with sex (what little there was), but fumbled to a halt when Itachi finished dismounting the stairs, watching him walk the last few steps to stand before her and falling into silence with trepidation in her heart and mind.

He stood in front of her a moment longer, looking down at her position cursorily with a slight furrow in his brow, as though he didn't quite like where she was sitting, and then sank down to one knee, coming eye to eye with her more abruptly that she liked (she shrunk back from him as much as she could, her heart beating frantically).

"You are correct about one thing, though… there is little point in carrying on in this manner. I have brought you here for a purpose, one that has been heavy on my mind for some time, and hopefully, by the time that we are done, I will have the answers I need," he informed her poignantly, reaching out one hand towards her slowly, as though to test how she would react, and Sakura flinched away from him, shuddering.

He frowned at this, withdrawing his extended hand as though burned by her denial, before smoothing his momentary expression into nothingness and standing once again, taking two strides away and turning his back. Since he kept himself in Sakura's line of vision, and had almost deliberately not touched her, her hair being roughly seized from behind shocked her to the bone, shaking a shriek of both surprise and pain from her lips. She complied with the pressure that the person (presumably) was putting on her neck and chin (another hand had taken firm hold of that as well), moving it to look after where Itachi had strolled, and saw, from the corner of her eye, an exact copy of Itachi standing behind her, looking down on her with a stony expression.

How…? He hadn't even moved a finger on _one_ of his hands; how had he summoned a clone?

"It is not a clone; it is simply another manifestation of me. I can create them infinitely here," the real Itachi explained from his position, almost eerily reading her mind (could he do that here too?), hands crossed behind his back and eyes directed up at the crimson sky. "In the world of the Tsukuyomi, _anything_ that I wish is possible. Time, space, day, night… all are under my control. I could slow the clock until it did not move at all, stopping your heart from ever beating again… or turn it so quickly that your body withered before your very eyes. Your worst nightmares are at my beck and call. Every torture that you can imagine, every pain your fears can summon, every moment of agony that you have _ever_ felt… none can compare to the horrors that I could subject you to here."

He turned around then, walking back to face her (the Itachi behind her forced her to follow his every move, fingers painfully tight in her hair and against her flesh), and looked down on her without pity, the wrath he had shown before plain in his gaze.

"You asked what I wanted to know so badly that I would spare your life, that I would take so much trouble to bring you here for… you are determined to get to "the point" of your presence here… very well. I will ask you my questions, Haruno Sakura, and you _will_ answer them compliantly. If I am not satisfied with your responses… you will suffer," he muttered harshly, his voice finally showing his feelings by practically pulsating with fury, and Sakura, frightened out of her wits, kept her silence, looking back at the enraged male standing over her as meekly as she could manage. He took this as her answer, nodding shortly in acknowledgement.

"You finally show some wisdom," he praised insincerely, flashing a shadow of a smirk at her when she flushed resentfully. "We shall see how long it lasts. Now, for my first, and most important, question…"

"Why have I been seeing you, a girl I have never previously met before, in my dreams?"

Sakura, blindsided, shell-shocked, and panicked (she couldn't answer a question like that, she didn't know how! What did he want her to say?!), could do nothing more than stare, floundering in her confusion and trembling in the other Itachi's grip.

"I… I don't… _what_?" she queried shrilly, the chains on her wrists jingling unpleasantly in her terror, but, by some miracle, Itachi didn't seem to be angered by this answer, merely closing his eyes and letting out a very quiet sigh.

"Yes, I had thought you might not have known of that…" he mused, almost to himself, before opening his eyes and looking back down at her matter of factly. "And you have no idea how something like that could have happened? Some jutsu you learned… a witch doctor you ran into who promised vengeance in a strange manner… anything?"

Sakura shook her head vigorously immediately, immensely confused by the direction this was going. She hadn't expected a question like _that_ at all… she had thought that he was going to squeeze information about Naruto or Konoha out of her. It was a certain amount of relief, though a large part of her fears remained; what could he possibly want to know something like that for?

She had heard rumors that he had gone insane, but these didn't seem like the ravings of a madman; merely the thought processes of someone on a tangent that she didn't understand.

"Why would I want to be in your dreams?" she queried in a rush, trying to institute negative reinforcement for the idea, but, apparently, had said something wrong; Itachi's face closed down, offense and scorned resentment overtaking his thoughtfulness, and the fingers in her hair and on her chin tightened painfully, the false shinobi reacting to its look-alike's emotions with mirrored ire.

"That is very rude," the Itachi before her muttered venomously, something dangerous lilting at the edge of his speech that made tremors run up her spine in shock waves. "I don't think that you want to say things like that right now, Haruno Sakura… I do not want to be forced to hurt you, but I am not in the mood to abide insult, least of all from you. You will regret another slip of the tongue, should you make one."

Sakura nodded as well as she could while having her head held so tightly in place, her pulse beating rapidly against the faux Itachi's thumb. She needed to be much more careful; Itachi wasn't in a forgiving disposition, if he ever was in one, and had clearly had enough of her quips (despite the fact that she hadn't meant to make one; she hadn't been trying to insult him, she had been genuinely curious).

She didn't know what he would do if she messed up again, but she had a feeling that it wouldn't be a good experience.

"I understand, but… that's not what I meant. I just… I was just… I was wondering what good it would do me to be in your dreams, even if I could manage it. Why would I do it? How would that help anything?" she asked tentatively, crossing the fingers of her good hand hopefully, and, both behind and in front of her, Itachi calmed, relaxing out of their sudden tempers.

"Ah… that would make sense. In answer to you, however… I imagined it as a sort of belated vengeance for my treatment of my otouto. It is not a secret that you loved him for a long time, and an attack on his worst enemy would not be out of the question. As for its effectiveness… let me assure you, were I not to be who I am, the distraction would be _very_ inhibiting. Even for me, the disruption is… encumbering," he admitted, the inflection on the last word confusing to her overtaxed brain (he said it like it was both a curse and a blessing; what could that mean? What did _any_ of this mean?), before looking off into the middle distance, the same expression he had worn when asking, round-aboutly, about her virginity coming over his face.

Cast adrift once again, Sakura blinked in silence a few times, repeatedly losing her train of thought due to the false Itachi's behavior (it had loosened its grip significantly and was, at the moment, running its thumb up and down the outline of her clenched neck muscles and stroking her hair between the fingers of its other hand at the same time), but finally managed to gather her thoughts from the jumble they were forming in light of all the confused and senseless information she was receiving, somehow putting together a coherent question.

"But… how could a few dreams bother you that much? I've had a couple of dreams about the same thing occasionally…" she queried uncertainly of the contemplative Itachi in front of her, jerking him from his thoughts abruptly, and he looked down at her for a moment in blank scrutiny before letting loose an actual, heartfelt laugh, a surprisingly pleasant sound coming from a man who she preferred to think could only exude evil and malcontent.

Perhaps he wasn't so inhuman after all…

"'A _few_?'" he questioned in ironic disbelief once he had calmed himself, directing his gaze up to the blood colored sky as though asking the gods to give him strength, before looking down on her with both eyebrows raised. "I don't think you understand the magnitude of my problem. Do you honestly think I would have gone to all of this trouble for the sake of one or two wayward dreams?"

"I have dreamed of you every time I sleep, without fail, for the past three years."

Sakura, in the wake of what Itachi had revealed, could think of nothing to say in response, shocked beyond words. She didn't understand how something like that could happen, if it really had; the only time she had ever seen this man, even at a distance, was when she had been eight years old, on the first day of entering the Ninja Academy. He had glanced at her once but hadn't looked back, preoccupied with accompanying his brother as he had been, and she had not cared about the presence of such an older boy beyond recognizing that he was very tall. He couldn't possibly remember enough about her from that lone encounter to have that many dreams…

This had to be a trick.

"That's not possible. We've never even met before; how could you have enough subconscious imagery to supply three years' worth of dreams?" she demanded, too incensed by his outrageous lie to remember to be afraid or awkward (the false nin behind her was still tracing its fingers along her neck and through her hair, and it was very distracting), and Itachi, who had been watching his double touching her with a furrow between his brows, looked back at her placidly, at the same time waving a dismissive hand at his copy.

"We do not need to have formally met to have heard of one another; we did live in the same village for eight years. But your point is true in its essentialities, and while I did see the child that you once were off and on, I did not know your name or who you would become. Therefore, it was as much a surprise to me as it is to you that I began to dream so often and so regularly of you," he told her as, much to her amazement, the Itachi behind her released her, stepping around her with one last protracted touch (dragged lingeringly along her cheek) to sit on the steps in front of her, thereafter propping its chin on its hands to stare at her with sharp, avid attention. "I did not understand either, and after the first few weeks of the dreams I took measures to discover who, and perhaps what, you were. I followed the trail of information that described you back to Team Seven, but did not find any answers there."

Itachi paced as he monologued, passing in and out of her eyesight as he rounded her kneeling position. This wouldn't have been so terrible if he had kept his distance, but he didn't; every time he walked behind her he passed so close to her that she could feel his presence through the air between them, unnerving and paralyzing and electric.

She wasn't sure if she wanted this time with him to end or not; she didn't want to spend another _second_ in his presence, but she also wasn't sure what he was going to do with her once he had finished interrogating her.

It would make sense for him to want to dispose of her, as she was just a distraction to him, but he had said he had no intention of killing her… her head hurt.

"You were only a small girl at the time, twelve, somewhat silly, and very much in love with my little brother; I did not deem you a threat, so I did not try to find you to confront you. It was not feasible to think that you could have done it when you were so inept with most of what you did, and I left it at that," Itachi continued on, either not noticing or not caring that he had offended her with his description of her younger self (it was true, but he didn't have to just say it like that) as he walked around in front of her again, his hands held behind his back but his eyes, hooded and dark despite the venomous red they were colored, always remained on her, penetrating and quick.

It didn't help that his twin was looking at her the exact same way… it just made it more peculiar and uncomfortable.

"I kept tabs on you though, since the dreams did not fade over time, listened to rumors and kept updated on current events in Konoha, and was, as such, witness to your growth; you trained with Tsunade, became strong, discovered your own path instead of walking in the shadows of others, and slowly formed into the woman you are today," he summarized from behind her, putting three years of hard work into a few words, but Sakura didn't have time to be insulted; she was too occupied with freezing in place, eyes widening and fingers clenching around her chains.

Itachi had bent down behind her, much too close for her liking, and had put a strong hand on her shoulder, stroking his other along the fall of her hair.

"You are not as conspicuous as you think you are, are watched carefully by dangerous men of great power in case you become a problem to them, and it was through these avenues that I came to have so much knowledge and, as you said, subconscious imagery, of you," he finished, his tone lower since he was speaking so close to her ears but his fingers bold as they separated one of her strands of hair from the others, twirling it around one forefinger almost idly, and Sakura shuddered, unwilling to accept his touch but afraid of what would happen if she refused it.

He had warned her that he would hurt her if she displeased him while he was asking questions, and she didn't want to feel the sharp end of that stick unless she had to.

She could put up with him touching her hair until he was done with her… she _could_…

"Alright, so it's not impossible, but still… knowing all of this will cure you, right? And even if it doesn't, you should be able to realize that these dreams are all just ridiculous illusions cooked up by an overactive imagination… you can move on now," Sakura reasoned hopefully, trying to unobtrusively inch away from the overbearing presence behind her (she could feel his breath on her neck, the beat of his heart though his hand, and it was seriously starting to freak her out), but Itachi wasn't accommodating, grasping her shoulder more firmly to keep her from escaping.

Sakura stopped fighting when he did this; not because it would have stopped her, but because the Itachi sitting on the steps was starting to look annoyed, and anything it felt was an exponential part of its counterpart's emotions.

The last thing she needed to do was make the man angry again.

"Three years, especially in the lifetime of a shinobi, is a significant amount of time; time enough to have wrought changes in a person… time enough to have bred a sort of dependency. I cannot merely let this fade into the ether; not after seeing you for myself, free of dreams and fantasies. It is more than I had dared to hope for, and _far_ more than I am willing to lose now that I have it," the real Itachi murmured fervently, holding the lock of hair he had captured up to his face and rubbing his cheek against it, and Sakura, frozen in place by the sudden gentleness and intimacy of his touch, choked on her breath, the impossibility of what was unfolding around her shocking her into a stupor.

This had to be a trick of the genjutsu… he was trying to disarm her by manipulating her hormones, by working off of her old feelings for his brother… he _had_ to be…

"I… I'm sure you could get over it; you're a strong minded shinobi. I can assure you that I would do my part in never forcing you to see me in person again," she whimpered, eyes flashing across her field of vision wildly as she searched feverishly for a solid standpoint to make him see, and behind her, Itachi let out a soft chuckle, his mouth pressing suddenly and chillingly at the nape of her neck.

"And still you do not understand. Never seeing you again would not help me, kunoichi; the progress of time has robbed you of this freedom. While the dreams I spoke of began innocently, visions of a beautiful girl and of the life we could have together the only contents, my imagination, and growth, have run with them, and though it was a gradual development, they slowly but surely evolved into much more complex delusions," he explained quietly, the hand he had laid on her shoulder sliding its fingers up her neck to smooth along the flesh of her throat, his mouth leaving a searing hot trail of kisses down the back at the same moment.

"Most particularly, though, was their progression over the course of the past few months; to put things bluntly, they have become rather… licentious," he informed her significantly, his voice becoming a silken caress where it whispered against her neck, and across the sky a sudden burst of images flashed, scenes of naked flesh and twisted limbs accompanying the unmistakable sounds of skin meeting skin and moans of pleasure (was... was that _her_ voice?), blown in on a sudden gust of wind scented with the perfumes of a lover's nighttime rendezvous. She didn't have to have had sex before to know what she was seeing, and the reality left her feeling clammy and feverish.

This wasn't real, it was just an illusion… _please_…

"No, I cannot simply let this go; let _you _go. Not only do I not wish to… I do not think I am able. I am only a man, and when faced with that which has held me captivated for such a length of time… can you truly blame me for my weakness?" he queried rhetorically, his questing thumb rising to touch almost tentatively at her gaping lower lip, but Sakura had had enough of his mind games (it wasn't true, nothing was as it seemed…) and ripped away from the touch of his hands, curling in on herself as much as she could with her restraints.

Her heart ached from the feelings he was teasing her with, and she could take no more.

"Please… please stop this. You win, I give up; I am weak and emotional and… and I have made my want for love my weakest link. You have my apologies for feeling; all that I ask is that you don't take it out on him as well. Now please… either kill me or leave me alone," she begged from the refuge of her drawn together arms, her eyes squeezed shut against the tears that threatened to fall from them as she thought of the terrible judgment she might have brought down on Sai, but didn't get the reaction she had wanted, or one she even suspected; short of acknowledging that he had been fooling her, or even simply granting her request and ending her…

Itachi flew into a rage that she would never forget.

The temperature around them dropped so suddenly and so steeply that her breath fogged and her overtaxed body shivered, trying to restore the warmth that had fled her so abruptly. The sky darkened, turning the color of rust as the moon seemed to get farther away, and, biting at the edges of the stone steps and crawling across the slate sand, frost creeped slowly closer towards her, a boding feeling of distress filling her heart as she watched its slow progression.

None of the icy terrain of the Tsukuyomi could compare in coldness to its master, however, and his appearance, unexpected and alarming, directly in front of her set her teeth on edge; she had never seen such cruelty or dreadful spite on anyone's face before, and seeing it on Uchiha Itachi's only made it worse. His scarlet eyes burned with a vicious malice that demanded retribution, his body held taut as though ready to attack at any given moment, and his fists, strangely the most telling of his features, were clutched tightly at his sides, white knuckled and shaking.

His aura was one of murder, and he was glaring, with the sharp white glint of bared teeth, down at her.

"And who, pray tell, is _he_?" he demanded in a growl, seemingly to only grow taller and more malevolent as the seconds ticked by, his chest rising and falling heavily in his ire while, in the background, the double of him prowled in a circle around the both of them, his expression echoing the true Itachi's exactly. "Who is it that you are so concerned with sparing my supposed derision? Do you speak of Sasuke?"

He considered this for a split second, his hard, cold eyes flickering over her face as he did, before shaking his head in a rushed jerk, his lips thinning.

"No; you are aware of Sasuke's hatred for me, and of mine for him. You would not waste words on something that you know better than to try to hold back. If not him, though, then… then you _have_ taken a lover," he deduced rapidly, speaking far more quickly than he usually did in his indignation, no longer really looking at her as he thought. It wouldn't have helped her even if he had been; she was desperately trying to follow his train of thought, thrown off by his tangent and the level of wrath he was displaying. "It would be someone you care for, are close to, and expected me to know…"

Itachi paused as he said this, his gaze sharpening back into awareness as realization struck him, but his meditative comprehension quickly disappeared behind a mask of hatred, the name of the person he suspected slipping from his lips in a toxic hiss.

"The painter nin…"

Sakura's eyes widened exponentially, stunned by his assumption as well as his venom. He thought that Sai and she… were… but that wasn't the important issue at the moment; she needed to focus. Itachi had overreacted to her words because he had presumed that she was trying to protect someone she was sleeping with, and now thought that that person was Sai.

From the look of things, he was angered by this enough to lose his renowned control; she needed to act fast.

"No! Sai and I aren't involved; I was just… I was talking about Naruto. You are here to capture him, after all, and he's my best friend…" she explained in a rush, biting at her bottom lip in petrified hope (she couldn't let this man hurt Sai, not because of a stupid slip up on her part…), and Itachi snapped his gaze back to her, inspecting her posture and expression closely (he appeared to be slightly distracted by her lip biting, for some reason) before folding his arms across his chest stiffly, his expression judging and disbelieving.

"Is that so? I find myself doubtful, considering how desperate you are to clear his name and with how the two of you were communicating earlier…" he intoned punitively, watching her every move with hawk-like attentiveness, and Sakura swallowed nervously, shooting a glance at the still pacing faux Itachi when he walked into her peripheral vision before nodding as firmly as she could manage.

"No, we're not. He… he's not my type," she muttered dishearteningly, looking down at her knees as she admitted to something very true about her and the painter's possible relationship, and above her, Itachi snorted softly, unconvinced but done with talking about another man.

"I don't believe this claim, but I also don't care; it is no concern of mine that you have grown close to him. You will learn to suppress these feelings, and allow him no closer than the team bond you share, or you will wish that you had," he advised caustically, dire warning in his tone as he delivered his ultimatum on the subject, and Sakura, enraged by his mandate, whipped her head up to stare at him furiously, her hands fisting and her teeth gritting.

She wasn't some pawing, desperate whore, willing to bend to his every whim; she might be petrified by him, but she would _not_ let him think he could boss her around. Plus, they were still in the Tsukuyomi; all of this could be a complete farce.

She wouldn't let him win either way.

"What right do you have to tell me what to do, or who I can be with?" Sakura demanded indignantly, but Itachi had reached the end of his patience and restraint; with a snarl, he reached out, grabbed her throat in his hand, and forced her up on her knees to the fullest that the chains would allow her with a forceful yank, eliminating any illusion of choice that she might have had in one fell blow.

"What right? What _right_? I have _every_ right. I do not understand the power behind seeing you in my dreams, nor the chance involved in meeting you today, but I _do_ understand what passions my nightly excursions with you have left in me, and ensuring none but myself are privileged enough to have you is the least of what I intend for the future. For all intents and purposes, you are _mine_, and until the day that you come to know that as well, you would do well to warn other men away from you," he barked, his fingertips digging into her skin roughly, and Sakura, tears of pain and anger clinging to her eyelashes, glared back at him, defiant and resolute.

"I don't want you. I don't want you, and I _never_ will. I would rather _die_ than be yours," she spat, sneering victoriously over a remark that would negate anything that he could claim, but she had read him wrong again; she received, instead of more pain, a small, cruel smirk, its owner releasing her neck to let her fall back to her haunches in sarcastic magnanimity.

"Perhaps… but time has a way of wearing away at even the most stanch of resolutions. One day you will accept me, and only me; we are both young, and I am _very_ patient. You will find that I am also deeply serious about my warning; if you do not wish for the death of any suitors that might come to you, you would be wise to disappoint them," he revealed, showing his threat to be one of more weight than she had first thought, and then, just as suddenly as she had been immersed in it, the Tsukuyomi was gone, the coolness of the night breeze and the pale light of the full moon taking her breath away.

Her situation had not changed any, however; she was still being held against a tree by her neck and wrist by Itachi, her other hand hanging uselessly to her side and her toes barely touching the ground due to the difference in their heights. She was silent, for an almost too long moment, too amazed to suddenly be back; she had been so sure that she was going to die in that terrible place.

Had any of that been real? It had felt real; the fear, the pain, the confusion… had he just been trying to break her mind with nonsense, or… or had he just wanted privacy?

The fact that she didn't know made standing here with the man who had hurt her so badly almost unbearable, and with the realization that she probably would _never_ know came a wave of exhaustion like she had never felt before, buckling her legs beneath her and nearly making her black out. For some reason, as she fell, Itachi caught her and held her up, his hands gentle where they supported her upper back and neck.

"You will faint soon; you resisted the Tsukuyomi with too much of yourself for too long, and have exhausted your body of all its resources. We have one more thing to discuss though, before we part ways… something to remind you that not all of this meeting was an illusion," Itachi told her beneath his breath, looking over his shoulder in an almost invisible movement before moving his hand up to the back of her head, threading his fingers into her hair inescapably.

She didn't get a chance to resist; she wouldn't have had the energy to try to escape if she had. Without her permission, entirely against her will, and despite her slightly gaping lips, Itachi bent his head to hers, brushed her nose with his in a caress that was almost, _almost_ sweet, and then sealed his mouth over hers, silencing the gasp of violation that she tried to release.

Sakura immediately decided that she didn't like kissing: it was wet, sloppy, and entirely unhygienic. Not to mention uncomfortable; Itachi was pressing her backwards into the tree behind her as he forced her lips to move with his, and the bark was biting into her back. She was particularly disgusted by the part where he stuck his tongue into her mouth, twisting it around her own noncompliant and still tongue for a few seconds before withdrawing it.

Overall, she would have to say that she would be happy to never participate in something like this ever again, and would like very much to sock the man who was making her do it with him in the face.

She ignored the pleasant heat that built in her cheeks every time his lips broke the suction they had formed over hers, the sound both embarassing anddrawing; it was a simple bodily function. She paid no attention to the fact that her heart beat faster when he pushed his chest against hers, or when his arms tightened to pull her closer; chemical reactions. She also put out of mind how much she liked the pleasant flavor of sweet dumplings he left behind in her mouth after removing his tongue from it, as well as the tingling in her lower abdomen that sprung into life unwanted while he was performing the debatably sensual act; she… it… they could be explained somehow, she was just too tired to remember right now.

She would definitely forget the sense of loss she felt when he finally pulled away, along with the sudden, debilitating shyness that overcame her from seeing the fragile, thin string of saliva connected to their lips that bore evidence to their previous activity; she had to, or she was going to go insane.

They stood close together for a prolonged moment, Itachi's forehead laid against Sakura's as he panted for his lost breath with a minute but self-important smirk turning up the corner of his lips, Sakura herself doing anything that she could to avoid eye contact with him (including looking at his nose), before, with a contented sigh, a hand wiped over his mouth, and a knowing look, Itachi pulled back completely, assuming his greater stature with poise and grace (that stupid little grin hadn't disappeared yet, though; if it didn't soon, she was going to smack it off his face, Sharingan be damned).

"Make sure to remember that… I do not think you will be as amiable to being told the next time we meet," he chuckled, his laugh smooth and deep and uncharacteristically soothing despite its muted quality and who it was coming from, and Sakura, doing her damnedest not to blush, scowled at him, trying to blink away the blurs that were taking over her vision.

"I really wouldn't mind never seeing you again, honestly," she tried to snap, but only ended up whispering wearily, and Itachi shook his head, smoothing the back of his hand down the side of her face as her eyes drifted closed.

"Oh no; that wouldn't do at all. This is far from over between us, Haruno Sakura…" he claimed, his voice breaking and fading in and out as she faded from consciousness. "There is time for everything, and everything in time. Do not forget my warning, though… I will be watching."

Sakura spared him one last attempt at a scoff, a soft breath of snorted air her final display of her opinion on him, before she fell into blackness, the world fading from view for, thank the gods, the last time that night.

* * *

><p>Itachi supported the limp girl long enough for him to reposition her broken arm before letting her slide down to the ground, assuring that she was in a position that wouldn't injure her further and then, with one last, prolonged gaze sent the exhausted woman's way, he turned to face the silent woods, folding his arms into his sleeves taciturnly.<p>

"I know you're there, boy; there is no profit in hiding any longer," he called out, aware that he had been being watched for a negligible amount of time (he had only been there long enough to overhear the last thing he had said to Sakura), and from the tree line emerged the thin, pale form of Sai, his limp as pronounced as the spreading bloodstain on the front of his bandaged leg. His face was set firmly despite the pain he was in, and he met Itachi's gaze without fear, sending a quick, not unnoticed glance to where Sakura lay.

"If she is dead, you will die as well," he vowed stoically, clenching his paintbrush and scroll tightly in his fists, and Itachi tilted his head marginally, strolling casually away from Sakura's unconscious body.

"And if she isn't? Are you the hero come to reclaim the wronged maiden? If so, you are the saddest excuse for a savior I have yet to see. You are outclassed and outmatched, boy; it would be wise of you to call for your other friends before you do something you will regret," he replied evenly, looking away into the forest as though Sai were not even there, and, though he had to bite his tongue hard enough to draw blood to keep from retorting, Sai did just that, turning on his walkie talkie and giving out the coordinates of Sakura's location to the rest of the searching Leaf shinobi.

They were there within seconds, panting, bleeding, and injured all, but all present, and also petrified by what they found when they arrived: Itachi, with not a scratch on him, was standing over a motionless, beaten and broken Sakura, completely content to let them all get close enough to retrieve her but also, for some reason, not interested in fighting any of the rest of them. Kakashi, taking advantage of the circumstances, assessed the situation quickly, taking stock of Sakura's various injuries and comatose state before turning to the bored looking Uchiha, a sullen glare on his brow.

"You've sunken low, Itachi; there was once a time that you wouldn't have raised a hand against a woman, much less a weakened and injured child," he accused harshly, carefully picking up Sakura's limp body and holding her close, and Itachi raised a blithe eyebrow, gesturing at the wreckage of broken earth and uprooted trees that surrounded them.

"The last thing she is is helpless or destitute of skill, Kakashi; she singlehandedly destroyed half an acre of forestry, even as drained as she was. I would not have been able to best her without resorting to drastic measures… ones that I am not necessarily proud to have used on a woman, no," he admitted, and the color drained from Kakashi's face, a quick and worried look directed at the girl in his arms.

"You used the _Tsukuyomi_ on her?" he queried disbelievingly, and behind him, Naruto gaped, dodging around Yamato's suddenly pale and silent form to put a hand to Sakura's forehead worriedly, unsure of how to check for life but desperate to ascertain it. Itachi watched their concern without any sign of conscience, though, indicating his distance from the subject with a shrug.

"She refused to give up, even with a broken arm, multiple lesser injuries, and no chakra; there was little else I could do, short of killing her. Unless you would prefer I finish the job, I would take her and go; she will need the personal attention of your Hokage to recover. She would not succumb to the genjutsu without a fight, and very nearly lost her mind to it," he explained staidly, helpful for a reason that none of them could understand, but Sai, who had been clinging desperately to his control, lost his restraint in that moment, charging at the blasé missing-nin with a roar.

"I'll make sure you never use that god forsaken power again, you bastard; I'll rip your eyes out!" he howled, lost to his concern for Sakura's well-being and his guilt for not being there to help her, but Itachi was less than surprised by the frontal assault, dodging the clumsily attacking boy, hitting him in the back with a hard kick, and then catching him by the neck before he fell to the ground, aversion and conscienceless ire hardening his gaze as he held the shorter male off of the ground completely.

"Had I been in the mind to waste more of my energy, I could have turned you into a raving madman within the Tsukuyomi by now. Judge your opponents more carefully, foolish boy; the girl will not be healed by attaining a meaningless death," he criticized, looking Sai up and down apathetically, before releasing him and sending him stumbling backwards into Naruto, wiping his hands on his cloak almost absentmindedly.

"You should learn to control your pupils, Kakashi, or at least teach them when to recognize that a battle is lost. You should be on your way, though, if you are going; Kisame is recovering from whatever it is you did to him, and that boy is beginning to annoy me. I would not mind killing him, to be perfectly honest," Itachi said uncaringly as he turned from the small group of beaten and weary shinobi, but Naruto couldn't help himself.

"You're letting us go? Letting _me_ go?" he asked in disbelief, helping Sai stand as best he could, and Itachi turned to eye him contemplatively before nodding, looking away once more.

"Your friend put up quite the fight, Naruto, both in the Tsukuyomi and out. Her mind is of the same caliber and intensity as my own, and resists illusion with aplomb; had she not succumbed when she did, she may have succeeded in escaping. I may be without physical injury, but simply holding her within my genjutsu required over three-fourths of my chakra. It is likely that I would not be able to defeat all of you at once, not without retrieving my partner first. This is a lesson, one that your irrational friend there just learned; pick your fights," he claimed, waving a hand over his shoulder as he walked out of sight into the cover of the trees, and, though taken aback by Itachi's assertion, the Leaf ninja took advantage of his out of place charity, fleeing into the night as quickly, and as silently, as they could manage.

The last thing they needed was to be attacked by anyone else.

As Sai clung to Naruto's shoulder while they jumped urgently through the verdant tree tops, however, making their way into the land of Fire, and a country of refuge, at long last, he couldn't help but look behind them at the path they were leaving behind, a frown marring his normally emotionless lips.

The image in his mind of the Uchiha traitor running the back of his hand down the side of Sakura's face lingeringly was almost too much for his injured pride and slighted affections to handle; the thing that many of the texts he had read called jealousy burned him like a sickly green fire from just the memory.

She was unlikely to want to be with anyone after what that man had surely done to her (he was convinced that Itachi had violated her in the worst way; what else could that touch have meant?), but he would be there for her nevertheless; his first attempt at admitting his fledgling feelings may have fallen through, but she had been receptive.

He would help her forget the treatment she had suffered, and hopefully gain her trust in return.

* * *

><p>Halfway across the world, in a cave at the top of a lonely, age worn mountain, an old, frail man cast a handful of bones across the floor at his feet, sipping contemplatively at a steaming bowl of broth as he did. The air had not been right that day, and the stars were aligning in ways they had not for centuries; something was different.<p>

Something was wrong.

Once the broken pieces of bone had settled, the man leaned over to contemplate them, eyeing their positions and adjoining signs carefully. He was taciturn, for a time; all seemed to be in order. The rain fell as it always had in the land named for its coming, the despondent avenger continued his training under the serpent, the one eyed conspirator planned behind his mask, and the dark knight… was not there.

The old man leaned closer, attention caught by the misplaced bone. It was supposed to be almost in the center of the arrangement, closely following the path that it was meant to take to the bitter end; the dark knight's was the road of pain, sacrifice, and sorrow, but was integral to the course of the future.

It was no longer there, though; the bit of old cartilage that represented the traitor misunderstood, marked with a hole similar to a broken heart, was sitting outside the circle of adversity, touching corners with a small, pink stone lying on the cave floor that had nothing to do with the casting. Its direction indicated hope; its angle determination.

It spoke of lightning, fear, a meeting that was never meant to be… and a new resolution?

Confused and apprehensive, the old man picked up, shook exuberantly, and recast the bones, suspicious of a misread. They didn't happen often, but were possible; bones were very temperamental fortune telling instruments, and he might have offended them accidentally. But the reroll did not help; the old, stained bones assumed the positions they had taken only a moment before, the dark knight stubbornly landing beside the small, insignificant rock once more.

The old man frowned, picking up the pebble and holding it up to the light of his fire. Something like this had never happened before… this cast had been the same for the past seven years, ever since the Uchiha clan massacre.

He sat staring at the small rock for a long time, unmoving and lost to his thoughts, before, with a doubtful frown, picking up his bones once more, adding the pebble to them, and dropping them one last time, not entirely convinced anything was going to change.

It was the first time in thirty years that he had been wrong.

With a clatter, the bowl dropped from the man's hand, sending soup, shattered pottery, and upset bones all across the stone floor. He didn't move to stop its crawling advance, however; he was already up, rushing to grab his ragged hide cloak and staff from where they lay in a corner. He had to get to Fire country, and quickly; everything that was supposed to occur was changing, and he couldn't let it.

There was a reason things had been the way they were; everything would fall in place in its time.

As he hobbled outside, limping as fast as he could for the thin, winding path that would lead him down from the mountain, the oracle of the gods looked up at the sky accusingly, frowning deeply. What did they think they were doing up there? This was no time for a god's interference…

Snorting and shaking his head, he left his home in favor of salvaging what still could be saved of the future that had been meant to be, leaving behind a pool of cooling broth, a dying fire, and a bone marked with a broken heart, its corner connected to a small, pink stone even through the confused disorder of the rest of the world around it.

* * *

><p><em>Ugh… well, there you have it; an unexpectedly long chapter. I honestly didn't plan on making it this long, but I also couldn't be bothered to stop in the middle, so… yep. I do apologize for Sai and Yamato; I actually haven't written substantially for either of them before, and they need some heavy refinement. I also apologize for the wait; I promised somebody this chapter about two months ago, but my laziness and my computer deleting all of my stories defeated me for a little while. It's done now though (thank god for that), so leave me a review if you feel like it. It's always appreciated, and as always, thank you for reading and I'll see you next time.<em>

_(Extra reminder: if you're confused as to why this is no longer Non-Massacre, please refer to the Author's Note at the top of the chapter.)_


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